


I'll tell you all the story

by ithoughtslashmeanthorror



Series: See how deep the bullet lies [7]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games), Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bat Family, Bat Family Feels, Brother Feels, Bruce Wayne is a Good Dad, Canon-Typical Violence, Explosions, Fight Scenes, Gen, I feel like at this point in the story I don't need to do this, If you start here you're going to be confused, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, It's apart of a series, Jason Todd Has Issues, Tag things, Wedding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-07-16 06:50:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16080749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ithoughtslashmeanthorror/pseuds/ithoughtslashmeanthorror
Summary: Jason and Bruce are back in Gotham to attend the wedding of Tim and Barbara.It's an in-out mission.Get in Gotham.Get out of Gotham.But then, it's never been that easy.





	1. Snips and snails

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not going to lie.
> 
> This is my favourite story in the series.
> 
> Cause in my head, it's Act II.
> 
> Let me explain...
> 
> Taking out 'Something Pretty' and 'How am I going to be an optimist about this?' which were me just having fun with writing, this whole story was written for me to resolve two big things that I had been wondering at the end of Arkham...
> 
> And I would LOVE to tell you what those two things are, but it would totally spoil this part of the story.
> 
> But this is the big one. The one that ups the stakes.
> 
> You ready?

Gotham, New Jersey, was made of old money. New money – Luthor, Lord, Kord – weren’t welcome at the parties or in the real estate market. Of course, they were pandered to, but they would never – could never – be legitimised. At least, not in their lifetime.

Gotham’s rich didn’t respect money until it was at least four generations old, and Gotham’s poor didn’t trust it unless it was made from their own blood, sweat, and tears. Some old money families, like the Queen’s, would have been welcomed into Gotham, but they avoided the city like the plague it was. The formalities were tiresome, the people were snobbish, and the criminals were a dangerous, dark breed of their own.

Mobsters making fortunes – small fortunes, in comparison to the wealth of  _some_  of the founding families – were tolerated by everyone, high and low, because they were Gothamites. They indulged the rich, kept income flowing through the poor, and the Gotham police needed them as much as they loathed them because they were always willing to flip on the crazier side of Gotham’s criminals. Their businesses and their fortunes were built on Gotham’s foundations, and that was acceptable because the second thing Gotham was made from, was pride.

Whether you were born in the gutters or born in lofty penthouses, Gothamites were proud to live in Gotham. Even when it hurt. Even when the chaos caused by the rogues tore their buildings down and ripped their families apart. They rubbed the ashy grit that floated through the city into their wounds, woke up the next morning and carried on. They endured because that was Gotham. That was their home, on an island off the state of New Jersey.

Pride and money.

It should have been inscribed into the foundations of every building.

Like Gotham, pride and money had raised Jason Todd. The city way of life was ingrained in his skin. He was born on the rooftops, his first starving breath filled with the grime.

That had been in Park Row, surrounded by the dredge of Gotham. During the day or at night with all the street lights turned on, those rooftops had been dark. Now Jason stood on top of Wayne Tower near the witching hour, drenched in the warm light of the helicopter pad.

It was a testament to how far he’d come. From one rooftop to another.

But he had run those long miles between the buildings and he was tired.

Tired and aching.

He swallowed, looking out to the city that he loved and hated in equal measure. The city had made him, devoured him, and rebuilt him in its own brutal fashion. The city he tried to run, save, and destroy.

His home, a city that raised him, then buried him. Expelled him, and welcome him back.

A city that would bury him again.

He stepped out onto the ledge, aware of the shouts coming for him. They were approaching from all angles in a dizzying wave. He drowned them out by concentrating on his breathing.

Breathing.

He took a long breath in to keep himself balanced, his feet on the edge.

Pride and money. Money and pride.

Money tormented him as a child, saved him in adolescence and facilitated his warped goals in his adulthood.

Pride kept him clean as a child, shaped his path as Robin, then turned him into a monster when someone twisted his perceptions of reality.

He was Gotham. It beat in his heart, ran in his veins.

And like Gotham, he had been corrupted and controlled by an almighty darker influence.

 _No more,_  Jason thought. _No more. No one will control me again._

He was done with it. Jason’s toes hung over the edge of Wayne Tower, and he stared down, his breath leaving his body as his brain tried to fathom the height.

Heights didn't bother him. Not normally.

He’d fallen off taller buildings than Wayne Tower. Had stared to the ground and felt nothing. But now, with the knowledge of why he was there, the height made him nauseatingly dizzy.

 _We don’t fall, Little Wing,_  Dick’s charming smile twisted in his mind's eye.  _We’re Robins. We fly._ He launched himself from the board, straight at the fly bar, twirling and whirling down and down and down.

 _I’m not a Robin,_  he reminded himself.  _I’m a Joke that went on too long._ _A Joke that stopped being funny._ _I’m a Joke that fell flat._

_A dead Joke._

_Well, not yet._

Jason Peter Todd was born on a rooftop in Gotham -

 _That ain’t flying,_ he had said to Dick.  _That right there is just fancy falling._

He leaned forward.

The air rushed up to greet him.

\- so it only fitted that he died on one as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strap yourselves in, folks.
> 
> It's gonna be a bumpy ride.


	2. Vivid Dreaming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys...
> 
> GUYS.
> 
> I'm in Gotham.
> 
> Kind of.
> 
> I'm technically in New York City. It's my first day today, but I COULDN'T GET TICKETS TO COMIC CON (much to my depression) but I've had a brilliant day.
> 
> It's 3 in the morning and I still have some jetlag and a bit on Sydney time, so I thought I'd update.
> 
> Sorry my timing is long now... I have to say, for my mental health, working somewhere I love is amazing.
> 
> For my writing, it's terrible. Because I normally use writing as an escape. BUT I AM COMMITTED TO FINISHING THIS STORY.

Jason woke up with a gasp, eyes popping open and straining against the light of day. 

He felt restrained, although it was only moments before that he felt like he was flying. Experimentally, he tugged at his arms, trying to pull loose but a quick hushing noise filled his ears. “It’s okay. Jay, it’s okay, it’s just me, Bruce. I’m letting go now, okay? I’m letting go.” Bruce’s voice was quick but calming in his ear, and Jason forced himself to relax. 

 _Nightmare,_  he thought. It must have been a bad one too because Bruce had managed to get Jason’s arms across his chest and was holding him steady by holding him from behind and had him pinned.  

Bruce let go slowly relaxed his arms and pulled away from Jason, then got out of bed and stood by it awkwardly. Jason pulled away too and hissed when he unwound his arms from the mummified position they were trapped in, and stretched out his legs, sitting up on the headboard. There was blood up and down his forearms. “What the fuck?” 

“That’s why I grabbed you,” Bruce said. “You were screaming and digging your nails into your forearm.” Bruce’s arms were also bloodied, and Jason squeezed his eyes shut. 

“Did I hurt you?” 

“No. It’s all yours.” 

Jason reopened his eyes to look at his arms. He had some dark marks, but otherwise, the skin was healed. It had been a long while since he’d had a nightmare. A month and a bit, maybe. But it had been longer still since he’d hurt himself during one to such a degree. “Shit. I don’t remember a thing.” 

Bruce raised his eyebrow. “Not even the dream?” 

Jason squinted, rubbing at his face. He considered it. “No? Kind of... I think... I was in Gotham, maybe? It was cold and windy…” 

“You’ve never hurt yourself like that before. At least not since you’ve been with me.” 

Jason’s eyes went to the sheets where the blood splatters were drying and brown. “I have before,” he admitted, frowning at them. “Like... twice. It’s not too common. Been a year or two, maybe.” 

“Do you know what triggers it?” 

Jason flinched, and his nerves were building up. “B, I’m trying to be grateful here, but it’s too early for the third degree. My head hurts.” 

Bruce winced visibly, which was a feat for Batman. “You hit your head.” 

“Huh?” 

Bruce sighed and pointed to the bed head next to him and there, against the dark wood, was blood splatter. Jason flinched and touched his forehead where there was a small lump, still healing. “Ouch. Why does my sleeping self want me to die?” 

Bruce shook his head. “I did try to pin you down. That may have aggravated you.” He looked like he wanted to ask more questions, but judging by the twitch of his lip, Bruce was restraining himself. “Are you feeling okay?” Bruce asked. 

Since he and Alfred had removed the pieces of the knife that had snapped off inside Jason’s leg, Jason’s body had been able to finish healing itself and he stopped feeling so cold all the time. 

He’d been able to resume his normal workout routine after that, but he hadn’t gotten immediately back into the shape he used to be in. Because of that, he’d been injured a few times when sparring with the dummies, spraining and twisting things, and each time Alfred left a jacket around Jason in case his temperature dropped again. 

It was a little frustrating, but he let it go. It was Alfred after all. “I’m fine,” Jason huffed. “Annoyed, but fine.” 

“Okay.” Bruce stood up and took the empty glass Jason usually filled with water from the bedside. He frowned, not remembering drinking it, but didn’t mention it to Bruce. “I’ll be downstairs. What do you want for breakfast?” 

Jason frowned. “Where’s Alfred?” 

Bruce paused, eyes darting to the bloodied bedpost. “He left… For London. He’s picking up his daughter and bringing her to the wedding.” 

It all came back to him then. Alfred left the night before. He’d forgotten. “And Selina’s in Paris,” he murmured. 

Bruce nodded. “She’s meeting us in Gotham.” 

Jason remembered. She had been on a job. He knew that. His head just hurt and it was early in the morning. 

“Dick’s coming in the afternoon,” Bruce added. “He’s flying the two of us to Gotham.” 

Yes he was. They’d been texting about it the night before. He looked down at his rust coloured arms. He looked at the bloodied white sheets on the bed and the blood stain on the bed. “It’s okay, Jason,” Bruce said quietly. “It’s just a minor setback.” 

“Yeah.” He fell quiet, glaring at the bed. 

“Is this about the wedding?” Bruce asked. 

Of  _course_ , he had to go there. Of course, he had to bring it up. 

“No, B. It’s not about the wedding.” 

But the look on his face said Bruce didn’t believe him. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” he said, for the millionth time. 

Jason rolled his eyes. “Do you not want me to come?” he asked, bitingly. Maybe  _daring_  him to say he didn’t. Because he didn’t. Jason knew that. It didn’t help that he’d overheard him and Selina talking about it. Taking about him and his progress and his mental state like he was a child and he was in their care. 

“I got it. You don’t have to keep reminding me.” 

“Of course, I want you to come. You’re invited.” Bruce paused and Jason just waited, knowing there would be more. “But you don’t have to come if you don’t want it. I don’t want you to force yourself.” 

“I’m not.” 

“I know Dick and Barbara have been calling you every other day begging you to go, but you don’t have to feel pressured to come with me.” 

“There is no pressure.” 

“Alfred said he’ll stay with you if you want him to. Or I can stay, and Al can go. Tim and Barbara would understand.” 

“I know. I get it. I have a choice. I don’t have to go back to Gotham. I understand!” he snapped, and he glared up at Bruce. 

But Bruce didn’t react. He didn’t look sheepish or angry or apologetic. He just stared at Jason, studying his face for a sign of something else. 

Something like he was going to break. 

But Jason wasn’t. 

Up until that morning, in the last few weeks, he had felt… 

Good. 

It had been a long while since he felt genuinely good, and the world didn’t feel as if it was smothering him. Jason likened the anxiety he used to feel deep sea diving without a pressurised suit. When Bruce would run simulations to keep them ready for a tussle with a rogue Atlantean. The weight of the ocean had been on top of him, all the damn time. 

But since Bruce removed the broken pieces of a knife he’d had shattered in his leg at fight club, and his body temperature had started to regulate itself normally again, he’d felt a lot better. It probably also had to do with Dick’s regular visits, and Barbara’s semi-regular phone calls – the ones that came  _after_  the disastrous one on New Years – and Alfred’s meals, and Selina’s conversations... 

Bruce’s arm wrapped around his shoulders when the nightmares turned bad. 

Jason shook his head. If it weren’t for them, he’d probably be doing mercenary work, trying to avoid being hunted by the Federal Police. 

 _Stupid nightmare. Can’t just be better, can it? Something always has to screw up._  

“I’m gonna shower,” he said, getting out of bed. “I’ll clean up all of this.” He walked into the bathroom, not waiting for Bruce’s reply, and couldn’t help but slam the door shut. 

The wedding was a week away. Less than a week. _Four days._ He was going. Had agreed to go. Then promised. Then grunted and rolled his eyes every time someone asked if he was sure he was going to be okay. 

He stopped and looked in front of the mirror at himself. 

It had been almost five months since the siege in Gotham. Five months and a roller coaster of emotions. 

Some of them he trusted. 

Some of them he was still trying to figure out. 

Dick came by every week or so by jet. He was making good on the promise to install a  _boom tube_ in Mazatlán, and Bruce said something about spotting the League on the servers in their version of the Batcave. 

Barbara called all the time. 

Tim spoke to Bruce now and then, calling in for advice on tackling Gotham crime. 

Things were almost normal. 

Except for the man standing in the mirror in front of Jason. 

The man with bloodied scars, up and down his arms. His face was plastered with blood, a deep scratch in his forehead that was healing, but still significant. He kind of looked like Carrie, post-prom and he glared at the reflection. 

 _This is not normal,_ Jason told himself. He rubbed the blood on his forehead and hissed because it still felt bruised. The only way he was getting it off was in a shower, so he stripped off his shirt and pants and got in.  _I am not normal,_ he reminded himself as he cranked the water up. It was momentarily too hot, but he let the heat scald his skin in punishment.  _I just have to pretend to be. Just for a few days._   

He had to. Barbara deserved to have a nice wedding, and for some reason, in that big strange mind of hers, that meant having her Batfamily there. Of course, Tim deserved to have Alfred and Bruce there too, and according to Barbara, he was the one who insisted they come. Jason figured Tim couldn’t care either way if Jason went or not. They hadn’t spoken since their last meeting, and Jason wasn’t sure if they were going to have a long lasting brotherly love. 

He didn’t really care one way or another what happened between them. He just didn’t want it to be weird.

Dick said to give it time. But Dick was an optimist. Jason wasn’t, and he had a gut feeling neither was Tim. 

As the water rushed down into the sink, all tinged with pink Jason considered another reason why he felt like he  _needed_  to go to Gotham. It wasn’t because of the wedding. The wedding was just an excuse. 

He’d been watching the news in the last few nights. 

Not the Mexican news. 

Gotham News, channel 52 with Vicki Vale. 

He hadn’t been watching when anyone else was around, knowing that it would make them worry as he watched drips and drabs of reports that were still coming in about the night of the Siege. Old women holding up photographs of missing loved ones. An orphanage overrun with freshly bereaved children. A segment about family who were almost homeless after coming back after the evacuation to a destroyed home and no possessions. 

He watched it with a morbid fascination. He knew some serial killers liked to watch the fallout of their actions. They would watch the family to see how they reacted to the death of their loved ones and would ride a high, as good as the one when they committed the crime.

Jason wasn’t doing that. 

Quite the opposite. 

Because with every new story about the Siege, showing just how much destruction he wrought, Jason hated himself even more. He looked down at his arms again, blood free but still scared and wondered if he had been punishing himself last night. Maybe his subconscious finally had enough and decided to do something to Jason, to make him pay for his crimes. 

Jason didn’t want to go to Gotham. 

But he thought that maybe he needed to. To see what had been done. 

To see the havoc he’d wreaked. 

Maybe to gain some redemption. 

He looked down at his arms and the scars.

Only then could he try and to find peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3


	3. Capes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry. That is all.

Jason stared around his room.

His room.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t had his own rooms since the Joker kidnapped him.

He had houses and apartments in a lot of major cities – an impressive property portfolio, considering real estate had never been his thing – but looking back, they were mostly safe houses and stashes for weapons, masks, and fake identities.

He was sitting in the first room, in the first home he’d had in years.

The first place he’d slept in for almost six years where he had slept, peacefully without fear of attack.

It was the first place he’d had that was home since that fateful night he’d run away.

He looked at the duffle of things he’d packed.

There were no guns or armour.

No masks.

Just some t-shirts, jeans and tracksuits. It was March, and Gotham was only just warming up, but it always erred on the side of cold, so he took a jumper and his brown leather jacket too.

It was so…

Normal.

He looked at his room, and his duffle filled and felt… scared.

_Is this how the first domesticated dog felt?_

It made him smile a little, but then a strange pang hit him in the stomach, and it clawed out of his throat, spread across his body and tightened his skin. It was a gnawing worry, and he looked at the closet again. _What if, what if, what if…_ ate at him, chewing frantic little bites.

The house was safe. He was protected in its walls but outside…

He could hear a high-pitched whine from the closet. A frequency static telling him like Poe’s tell-tale heart that something was waiting inside. His paranoia was breathing life into the only solution he knew. Jason’s default setting.

He got up and walked into the closet, pushing back the Shakespeare to reveal a shiny red button.

Weeks later, he decided that that was where the trouble began.

* * *

 

“Are you packed?” Dick asked Jason when he arrived.

His shirt was crinkled, and there were heavy shadows beneath his eyes. He looked like he’d just rolled out of bed.

They were in the living room, the doors to the cave open. Dick had parked the jet inside and come up through the secret door. Jason had sat on the couch waiting, glaring at the wall in anticipation all afternoon. He hadn't moved for hours, and Bruce was worried, but he kept insisting he was fine.

“No. I’m sitting here with a bag for the fun of it,” Jason bit out, rolling his eyes. He jiggled his duffle bag, the zipper almost bursting at the seam. He had a second backpack that he clutched to his chest, and a pair of headphones fed out from the pocket. He wore dark bruises beneath his eyes and still had the colouring of a bruise on his head from that morning. “Yeah, I’m packed, dumbass.”

“I just asked a question,” Dick sniped back. Bruce looked between to the two of them warily. He knew why Jason was tense, but the bend in Dick’s shoulders and the crusty sleep still in his eyes shouldn’t have been there either.

“Should we go?” Bruce asked, deciding it best to diffuse the situation.

Both boys rolled their eyes, and Dick grabbed Bruce’s bag before Bruce could get off the couch and slung it over his shoulder. “Yeah, whatever. Just took a day off to be a chauffeur, but act like an asshole.”

Jason stood up from the couch, and Bruce jumped up with him. “I’m not acting like a–” Jason started to shout, but cut himself off when Bruce slammed his hand over his chest. He looked down at Bruce’s arm and then back up at the frown on his face and leant back, off his toes onto his heels.

Dick had already gone back down to the cave, and the two of them were alone. “Are you okay?” Bruce asked, eyeing warily the scars that were still colouring Jason’s skin from the morning. They were paler, but they still there. Jason didn’t reply. “Answer me,” Bruce said, softly but commanding him. “I told you. If you don’t think you’re going to be okay–”

“It’s fine. I’ll be fine,” he muttered, running his hand through his hair and pulling at the ends the slightest bit before rereleasing them. “Just… anxious.”

It was the most truthful he thought Jason had been about going back to Gotham since they first tentatively started talking about it. “If you want to come back, at any moment, just tell me. We can leave and–”

“I know,” Jason sighed, and his shoulders deflated along with the tension in his jaw. “Let’s just go.”

When they got to the cave – after locking up the house and arming the alarms – they found Dick at the computer, linking a tablet to the mainframe. “What are you doing?” Bruce asked.

Dick didn’t hear him.

Bruce repeated himself.

“Huh?” Dick asked, looking over his shoulder. “Oh. I just thought of something… This thing doesn’t have the right programming to run a simulation so I’m uploading it to the jet.” He waved the tablet about and then refocused on the task at hand.

Bruce frowned and took his bag off the chair. “We’ll be in the jet. Want me to pilot?”

Without looking up from the monitor, Dick nodded, a frown between his brows as he typed something. “Shut down the computer when you’re done,” Bruce added. He wasn’t sure if Dick had heard him though.

An hour later, they were out of Mazatlán and in the sky somewhere above Mexico.

Jason had his feet up on the console in front of him, headphones on and staring out the window, while Dick had his knees up and was reading from his tablet, curled up in a way that only his acrobatic could allow.

No one had spoken. Dick was too deeply entrenched in the tablet in front of him, and Jason wasn’t in a mood. Bruce knew what was wrong with Jason – and Bruce was probably just as nervous as he was on their him on returning to Gotham. It was possibly the longest he’d been gone from his home since he’d become Batman and the flash of the Golden City from his dreams was still as alluring as it was dangerous and a terrible idea.

But it was surprisingly neither Bruce nor Jason’s anxious energies that were weighing down the jet cabin. It was Dick and the way he jittered like he’d had too much coffee as he scribbled notes over the page. “What are you reading?” Bruce asked, going for light.

It did not come out as light.

Dick didn’t hear him at first, so Bruce called out his name. “Huh?” Dick looked up, looking a little dazed. There purple under his eyes were almost black. He looked as bad as Jason had before Christmas, and he’d had a three-inch blade jammed in his bone. “When was the last time you slept?” Bruce asked.

Jason visibly played with his phone, head tilting to the side as he listened in but didn’t react obviously.

“Sleep is for the weak,” Dick said, looking back to the tablet in front of him. “And for those who can’t afford coffee.”

“Two days?” Bruce asked, acting as though he’d said nothing. Dick scratched his head with the tablet pens and made the same puckered expression he had when he was fifteen and had to do English homework. “Three days?”

Dick hummed and kept scrolling through the tablet. “You know, I’ve seen you go five without.”

As true as that was, that wasn’t the point.

“Five days?” he asked.

“No. Just four.”

“Dick!”

“Bruce,” he drawled back sarcastically. He pressed the back of the tablet’s pen as if it was going to click then glanced at it with a scowl when it didn’t.

 “What’s going on?” Jason asked from where he was sat, a little more diplomatically than Bruce. Dick lifted his head and looked at Jason with a quizzical expression. They both seemed to have forgotten how they’d snapped at the others heels back at Mazatlán. “Serial killer? Penguin on the loose? A large number of cats getting stuck up trees?”

Dick couldn’t help but snicker at the last one. “Gotham doesn’t have _that_ many trees… Although, Ivy left a few behind. But no. Nothing like that. It’s just, with the wedding this week I’m pulling double duty. I’ve been in Blüdhaven and Gotham, so Timmy and Babs can finish organising the wedding. It’s nothing crazy, but there’s been a lot of small crimes. Without the Rogues or Batman, the common folk are striking out. Petty thefts, a murder or two. I don’t want Tim and Barbara to get distracted with stuff like that, and as the Best Man, I felt it my duty to help out.”

Jason scoffed and pressed his head back against the headrest. “You should just go ask the heads of the crime families for a truce.” He settled back down and shrugged his shoulders. “You know they have rules about this sort of thing. Weddings, funerals…”

“Yes, and reveal to them Tim is Robin.”

“I’m pretty sure half of them already know,” Jason snorted. “I mean, it doesn’t take a genius at this point.”

Dick sighed. “Yeah, I know. I arrested Milos Grappa a few weeks back, and he just kept telling me his boys were going to beat me up when I was in tights.”

“Well, while I’m here if you need someone on computers while you’re out doing backflips to make up for the lack of Barbara, I can help out.”

“Really?” Dick asked, sounding mildly surprised.

Jason rolled his eyes. “It’s just for the week. I can work a comms and computer screen just as well as Red.”

“No, you can’t. No one can. But thank you for the offer. I may take you up on that.”

Bruce interrupted them and their truce. “Are you still working too?”

“Kind of. I took some vacation days this week, but I have four active cases. Five if you include a cold case, but nothing’s happened with them in at least a month.” Dick looked back at the tablet, writing something down on the side of the page. “Remind me to look into those if I get a minute.”

“But not every day? Today and the wedding, right?”

Dick made an airy motion. “I mean, I don’t have _that_ many vacation days… I happen to be absent from work a lot on account of the mask. Actually, I think they’re unpaid leave at this point.”

Bruce huffed, annoyed at his eldest. “You need proper rest.”

Dick yawned tellingly and shrugged. “I nap. I napped on the flight over to Mazatlán. Autopilot is a wonderful thing.”

The dark rings under his eyes and the paleness of Dick’s face suddenly reminded Bruce of Jason’s first few days with him at the house. “Jason, you’re flying,” Bruce said, getting out of the seat. Jason jolted and looked between both Dick and Bruce as Bruce stalked over to Dick and snatched the tablet out of his hand.

“Hey!” Dick objected.

“We spoke about this. About you taking on too much.” Bruce stared at the twelve open casefiles and glanced over them as Dick scrambled to get up.

“It’s just this week!” Dick got to his feet, but with a hand on the shoulder, Bruce pushed Dick back into the chair without looking up from the tablet. He heard Jason stifle a laugh behind them. Bruce logged into the League computers and pushed all the Blüdhaven cases over to some of the Titans and League Members, then sat where Jason had been with the other six which were in Gotham. “Rest,” Bruce said. He crossed one heel over his knee and cradled the tablet between his legs to read. “We’ll be in Gotham in another hour. When we get to Gotham, you will go to bed.”

Dick huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. “I am a fully-grown man.”

“Fully-grown men still need sleep,” Bruce said and frowned at some of Dick’s scrawled notes that were barely legible. He could feel Dick was glaring at him. “Sleep,” Bruce commanded without looking up.

Dick yawned again. “Fine. But not because you told me too. But because I don’t want to fight you for the tablet on what should be a happy week, and there is nothing else to do.”

“I don’t care why you do it, as long as you rest,” Bruce muttered, and sure enough, within the ten minutes Dick’s soft snores were filling the jet and Bruce settled into the cases.

The work was a good distraction from the anxiousness that was building in his chest.

Dick was right about the crimes. They were all small timers, trying to get ahead and seeing an opportunity to strike with the Batman gone. Nothing major. Petty criminals, but all with patterns meaning it was the same few people. Dick had collected the evidence, and all they needed was to get caught, but it was too much for one person to do on their own.

The pang for flying above Gotham skies came back to him.

Bruce winced.

He didn’t want it to come back. _What was it that Jason called it? The twitchiness._

He thought maybe he had already figured out the pattern of some bank robberies and stick-ups and could predict when both sets of criminals would strike next. It gave him a longing for leather and a mask. If he could just go out and…

_You’re back for the wedding, and that’s it. Then you go back to Mazatlán. No suits. No crime fighting._

As if to remind him of exactly why he was doing that, Jason chose that moment to clear his throat from the pilot’s seat. “Um… I know we’re going to Gotham, and I’ve kept a steady course but we’re almost there, and I have no idea where we’re going.”

Bruce lifted his head. “The coordinates should be in there.”

Jason rechecked them. “Hmm. Thought so. We’re staying at the Clocktower?”

Bruce could only see the back of Jason’s head, but his shoulders were relaxed. “Is that an issue?” he asked.

“No. Honestly it’s not. Just, intense, you know?”

Bruce did. Everything about that week was going to be intense.

Jason kept the plane flying straight. The quiet prickled the back of Bruce’s neck and but he turned back to the work and shifted his concentration. After a minute, he shifted again when Jason spoke. “Anything interesting?” he asked.

“Hnn,” Bruce replied, shaking his head. He didn’t hear Jason laughing quietly until silence descended upon the cabin. He looked up with a frown. “What were you laughing at?”

“Nothing,” Jason muttered, but even with his back to Bruce, he could hear the smirk on his lips.

_And if we go back to Gotham one day, we’ll make that decision together._

That’s what he’d promised Jason. He looked at the cases and then again at the back of Jason’s head. _We said we’d stay for a week, for the wedding then go back. That’s it. No more._

“I’m not twitchy,” he said quietly, reading his mind.

Jason shrugged. “It’s fine if you are.”

“We’re going back to Mexico.”

Jason sighed. “I believe you… But, maybe you should go out.”

“What?” Bruce almost dropped the tablet.

Jason shrugged, almost unaffected. “Maybe you should go out. Wear a mask. A different one from the Batman, considering you’re a wanted criminal and all that. Clearly Dick needs the help. I won’t get offended if you do.”

Bruce thought of the things he’d been working on. The things that he been keeping down in Talia’s version of the Batcave.

He’d packed it.

He couldn’t _not_.

_Twitchy._

He hated himself for it.

“It’s fine,” Bruce said. “The whole League will be there. We can get help.”

But Jason made a noise in the back of his throat, and though he didn’t _say_ the words, he could hear them anyway. _Like you would allow that._

Ignoring Jason was easier than admitting he was right, so he returned to the work at hand, tackling the criminal nightlife of Gotham, without interrupting Tim or Barbara on the week of their wedding.

“Thanks,” Jason said softly a few minutes later.

Bruce hummed, still scribbling. “For what?”

There was a long stretch of silence, and Bruce finally looked up. Jason’s shoulders were stiff, his body rigged. “Jason?”

“You letting me fly the plane right now. I could fly it anywhere in the world if I wanted to. I don’t know. It just feels like you trust me or something.” Jason shook his head, not looking back at Bruce. “It’s stupid.”

Bruce hadn’t even considered that. He should have because Jason’s track record of running away wasn’t great, but he’d been too preoccupied with Dick. “I didn’t even think not to,” Bruce told him.

Jason’s lip twitched for half a second with a wry smile, but then it disappeared. “B, I should tell you. I packed–”

A beeping noise went off in the jet, and Bruce frowned at the red light that began flashing on the dashboard. Dick woke up with a start as Bruce put the tablet down and unbuckled himself, moving to stand behind Jason as he hit the flashing button.

In front of them, the glass turned into a screen, and Barbara’s face lit up the features. She beamed at them, her headphones and mic around her head and a large Big Belly cup of soda on her desk. “Hey Boys. I saw you on my radar and figured I’d be the first one to say Welcome Home.”

Dick joined them, sleepily scrubbing his face just as the sunset on the horizon, behind the grey and black gothic city of Gotham. He heard Jason hold his breath as the jet glided through the glowing air and light pollution that hung around the night and Bruce reached his hand down and squeezed his shoulder.

Home.

For better or worse, they were home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Young Justice: Outsiders is the best DC series out and you can't change my mind.
> 
> Also, Ric Grayson needs to go already… Or Jason needs to walk into the comic and say, “I’m the broody one who tells the Batfam to fuck off, so fuck off, your name is Dick."


	4. The City Below

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya.
> 
> Quick notes: I couldn't find out who the mayor was after Sharp in the video games, so I’m just using Mayor George P. Skowcroft for the meantime. His major storyline in the 80s was Batman convincing him that Abby Holland shouldn’t be charged with Bestiality for loving Swamp Thing and that he should let her out of jail. I haven’t read the comic, but it seemed funny when I was researching.
> 
> Also, 2-3 weeks is what I can manage right now. But I'll get better. I had to get a second job, purely because of financials and I'm working on things. But all in all, I'm happier doing two jobs than the one I did before. So it's okay. I just want to move out of home before I'm twenty-seven... because I'm twenty-six in fifteem days, and that's going to be impossible.

Sirens, breaking glass, and stray cats and dogs.

Jason landed the jet on a rooftop just south of the Clock Tower and, stepping out of the jet, those were the first things he heard. 

Gotham. 

Those random noises sounded different in other parts of the world, but there in Gotham, they made perfect sense. Dick and Bruce were setting up security around the jet as Jason shrugged his duffle bag over his shoulder and stepped onto the edge of the building.

The cold night air chose that moment to sweep through the wind tunnels that the city’s grid made and hit him in the face, freezing him down to his marrows. He stared down the street – Elliot Avenue – and to the bustling people below. They weren’t too far from China Town, which was one of Jason’s favourite hangouts as a kid.

He looked down and below him was a guy pissing on the building as a mother pushed her pram into the building next to it, and a young couple spilled out from a bar across the street, with multi-coloured hair and a dozen or so piercings.

Nothing had changed.

It was both comforting and disturbing.

Almost a year ago he had landed on another rooftop in Gotham, not too dissimilar with a very different intention in mind. He’d started gathering the pieces to exact his revenge on his family. Now…

He looked over his shoulder where Bruce and Dick were arguing quietly again and shook his head. Even he had to admit, Dick looked stretched thin and he’d offered his help to his predecessor out of concern. He flinched as he turned back out and remembered sitting on yet another Gotham rooftop, watching as Deathstroke beat up Nightwing and Robin.

A hand came down on his shoulder, and he flinched, turning around to see Dick wearing a paper-thin smile. “You coming, or what?”

Ahead, Bruce was already opening the door and heading downstairs with a baseball hat pulled down over his head. Jason nodded once and readjusted his bag, walking shoulder to shoulder with Dick.

They got to the ground floor, and Bruce opened the door for them to head through. Jason got out first, his bulky bags too big to allow Dick and Jason to walk through the apartment doors together. Out on the street, he got his first whiff of sewerage and vendor meat that reminded him of being a kid, hungry and scrappy. He would follow that meat smell until he found the vendor and would have either saved up enough money to buy something or would have enough courage to steal it.

He looked down the road, glistening from recent rainfall, to find the hotdog stand that was blessedly still open at such a late hour when someone bumped into him from behind.

It was the shock of being back in Gotham, he decided later, that made him drop his guard. That was what he decided when he wracked his brain wondering how someone managed to jump him.

Because in one second, he was staring at the street with the heavy weight of his equipment on his shoulder, and the next he was stumbling and watching the back of someone running away with his duffle. “Hey!” he shouted.

Before he could think, or even hear Bruce or Dick’s shouts behind him, Jason dropped his second bag and took off running. He heard Dick cursing behind him, and then a second pair of boots on the pavement followed, and then a third as Bruce joined them.

“Get back here!” Jason yelled as the thief turned down an alley.

The thief – Jason couldn’t figure out if it were a man or a woman – was quick and bounded over a trash can in one leap, knocking it in Jason’s way. He lost sight of them for a second as he jumped over the same can and looked around the alley. He was surprised to see how far they’d run in such a short amount of time. They had thrown themselves on top of a dumpster near the end of the alley and jumped up on a fire escape ladder.

Jason watched in awe as the thief nimbly climbed the ladder, with the duffle over their shoulder and then yanked the ladder away so that he couldn’t reach it easily. “Jason!” Bruce called out, as he caught up with Dick. “Leave it alone.”

“They stole my stuff!” Jason snapped.

“We’ll get new stuff,” Bruce said calmly.

Jason growled and glared at them. “No. You don’t understand. I... I brought a suit.” The look on his face communicated the fact that it wasn't a suit for the wedding.

Dick and Bruce both exchanged looks that said a thousand things that Jason couldn’t hear. He found his fist curling in frustration as the Original Dynamic Duo conversed without him. With a small nod, Dick turned on his heel and ran back out of the alley and Bruce walked up to Jason, putting his hand on his back. “We’ll get it back.”

Bruce pushed Jason along and Jason huffed and felt something familiar stirring in his body. Something instinctive made him climb up onto the dumpster and then when Bruce was up there too, he faced his former mentor and waited expectantly for him to crouch down and hold his hands out. Jason took a short running jump, landing one foot into Bruce’s cupped palms and let himself be launched up towards the ladder.

Jason climbed, the rust scratching his palms, and at the top, he pushed the ladder back down for Bruce to grab hold of. He followed him up, though Jason was already running up the stairs to catch up to the thief.

The stairs led to the roof and as Jason reminded himself that he was born on a rooftop. That was where he had the advantage.

At the top, he searched around and saw the thief go right, where there was a walkway that led to the next roof over. Jason broke out in a run, aimed straight for them as Bruce made a wider circle towards them.

The thief disappeared behind a rooftop cabin, and Jason turned to his right to cut them off from the other side. But they were faster than he could see, and the next minute they were on the roof of the cabin.

His brain couldn’t figure out how they managed to run so fast. He started to climb the cabin, but just as he grabbed the rooftop, shoes kicking at the wall, they jumped down and kept on their original path. He kicked off the wall, trying to launch himself further ahead, but only just managed to regain some of the ground he lost.

He was reminded of his running days as a child when he had to be faster than the gangsters he was delivering messages and supplies to. 

As they turned to get around the water tower, he managed to just see a red mask covering the lower half of their face, and their hood hiding the top half. They were running towards the fire escape on the other side of the building and almost reached it when Dick appeared out of the shadows on the top of the stairs. “Going somewhere?” he asked.

The thief skidded to a halt, legs flailing out beneath them and they turned to run along the side of the building. It gave Jason enough time to catch up, and he was only a footfall behind the thief as they went to jump over to the next rooftop.

Lightning flashed in the sky above them, and between one flash to the next, a dark silhouette appeared on the next roof, blocking off their only way across. The thief screamed, a girlish churl, and skidded again, feet flying out in front of them and slipping over the edge. 

They kept flying forward, nothing there to stop them hitting the ground until Jason grabbed the back of their hood, ripping it off their heads to reveal a shock of neon orange hair. He fell to the ground, stomach hitting the cement, but gripped the hood so tight it stayed in his fingertips. The thief jolted in their jacket, hanging by the arms sleeves, and the material began to rip beneath Jason's palm. Still, she didn't let go of the bag, and he didn't let go of her.

Dick came up behind them both and grabbed the girl’s arm with Jason, and together they managed to pull her back up onto the rooftop where it was solid.

Before she could stop screaming, Jason snatched his bag back from her and unzipped it to check and double check that everything was in there and that she hadn’t dumped his things without him noticing. The thief scrambled up onto her knees and put her hands up above her head.

Bruce paced the side of the other building, watching as Dick pulled his hood over his head to hide his own identity. “Well that was one welcome home,” Dick said lightly.

Jason rolled his eyes. “It’s all here,” he said, pushing his helmet further in. He rounded on the thief. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Please don’t hurt me. I’m just trying to feed my sister and I. Please. I just needed some money.” She pulled down her mask and slammed her hands together. She was looking up at them with fat tears in her big grey eyes, though her face was thin and gaunt.

With a roll of his eyes, Jason zipped his bag shut and put it over his shoulder. “Yeah, yeah, everyone has a sob story in Gotham. You picked the wrong bag,” he growled, thinking again of his life as a kid. Picking pockets. Running errands. He bristled at the thought.

“Please,” she begged, her hands wringing together. “We lost our home. After the Siege. Our parents were killed, and we still can’t afford food or–”

Lightning flashed above them, and thunder boomed a moment later. Jason’s heart sank. He stared at the girl. Really stared at her, trying to place her in a sea of identical faces.

Her fingers were like spider’s legs, and her eyes were hollow.

He couldn’t place her. He was certain he’d never seen her before in his life. Her hair colour wasn't something easily forgotten.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Dick said, moving to Jason’s side and placing his hand on his shoulder. “We just wanted our bag back. Come on, Jay.” Dick tried steering him away as the girl’s body bent and she sobbed with relief. She buried her face in her hands and Jason stared at her numbly, trying to figure out who her parents were.

“How did your parents die?” he asked, planting his feet so Dick couldn’t move him further.

The girl kept crying and Dick lowered his voice. “Jason,” he murmured.

“Tell me,” Jason said, ignoring Dick.

The girl stared up at Jason, mouth hung open in disbelief. “They… were killed. In Pauli’s Diner… They were out on a date and…”

The sky broke in half and rain spilt down around them. It was the kind of rain that sunk into the skin and made it hard to keep your eyes open.

But Jason kept his eyes open. 

He focused on the girl until it hurt, and then lifted his head and saw Gotham again.

The sounds were the same, but the landscape was vastly different. The vines of Ivy’s plant ensnared the giant gothic buildings. A billboard for LexCorp gas masks was set up on top of the apartment across from them, and on the gargoyle nearby was a crater from one of the bombs he’d created to bring down Batman.

A real Gotham storm was blowing in, and he squinted against the fierce winds, turning his head towards Bruce. In between the flashes of lightning, Jason saw a black silhouette behind Bruce in the form of a cape, and tell-tale pointy ears haloing his head.

Anger rose up inside of him, gripping his throat but before it could escape, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Come on, Jay. Let’s go,” Dick said softly.

Jason opened his eyes, not even realising he’d squeezed them shut.

Batman wasn’t there.

The girl still was.

And Jason was still a murderer.

* * *

“Finally, you’re here!” Tim said as he opened the door into Barbara Gordon’s living room. “I saw you land half an hour ago. I thought you would miss the rain. What held you up?”

Bruce shot Tim a look to drop it as he walked inside and his youngest shot a quizzical look right back.

Bruce, Dick and Jason were all soaked to the bone, rainwater dripping from their hair and clothing. From behind Tim, Selina popped out from the hallway and inspected them as they took off the jackets and hung them behind the door. “It’s a look,” she said.

None of them had a witty response, and her comment hung in the air, expiring into awkwardness.

Barbara had moved apartments since the Siege. She was still in the Clock Tower, but rather than take up the studio Penthouse in the actual clock, she was occupying one of lower two-bedroom apartments which she usually let her Birds of Prey stay in. Bruce considered it for the best considering Jason’s green shade from the experience on the roof turned to a white linin when Barbara wheeled her chair out from around the corner. “Hey, you–” she said, and before she could finish, Jason turned on his heel with his duffle on his shoulder and went down the hallway.

“Jason!” Bruce called out for him, but Dick dropped the bag he was holding and went after Jason, going down the corner.

Barbara blinked in shock and rolled her chair forward. “Was it something I said?” she asked.

Bruce sighed and ran his hand through his hair, raindrops spilling down the back of his neck. “We got mugged,” he said.

Selina’s eyebrow shot up and by they got out of the doorway and Bruce finished explaining the exchange on the rooftop, he’d changed his shirt and Barbara was wheeling out dinner as Tim opened a bottle of wine. They were sat around the dining table, Barbara having prepared dinner, and two settings were left on the table for when Jason and Dick returned. Tim whistled low and placed his hand on the back of Bruce’s chair. “Well, that’s really bad luck. I can’t believe that happened as you landed.”

Something itched at the back of Bruce’s neck as Tim poured him a glass. “It was bad luck,” he said, and Barbara shot him a quizzical look.

“You don’t believe in bad luck,” she said, picking up her own glass of wine across from Bruce.

“No, I don’t. But the only people who knew we were arriving tonight were Alfred and us.”

“Maybe it was some seriously bad luck. I mean, things do just happen sometimes,” Selina said, lifting her glass up so Tim could pour her some too. She laid her hand over Bruce’s, squeezing his fingers so subtly that he was sure no one else had noticed, even though their hands were both on the table. She offered him a gentle smile. “Not that I believe in it either.”

Tim let go of the back of his chair and walked around, sitting next to Barbra, and across from Selina. His hair was a slicked back on the top of his head, but he looked aloof. “I’m sure it was just a coincidence,” Tim insisted, and that prickled Bruce’s neck even more. He frowned at him because, a lot like Bruce, Tim didn’t usually believe in coincidence.

But then he saw the smile on Tim’s face, and the way his arm was slung back behind Barbara’s wheelchair and how relaxed he was and he couldn’t help the smile on his own face.

“It’s fine,” Bruce said, pushing it aside for the time being. “You two are getting married this week. How is all of that?”

Barbara blushed and tilted her head down, looking nervous but Tim’s smile just widened. He leant over and kissed Barbara’s reddening cheek. “Perfect. Dick and I have our last suit fittings tomorrow morning, and the rehearsal dinner is almost going to be just as big as the wedding.”

“It’s just for masks,” Barbara said, shifting in her seat. “And my Dad, considering he knows now. So no one has to wear image inducers or play nice for the press.”

“There is going to be a lot of press at our wedding,” Tim said, a wide smile on his face. “We don’t even have to pay for a photographer.”

Barbara rolled her eyes as Selina asked, “Why don’t you close it off? Make it a private event?”

“There was no way we could stop them. Batman’s adopted son and the new mayor-elect?” Tim scoffed. “It’s Gotham. Someone is bound to get a camera in.”

“Anyway,” Barbara said quietly, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Dad’s campaign manager thinks it’s going to be good for the election. A lot of people are angry that Skowcroft still hasn’t dropped the vigilante charges against Bruce Wayne. Us getting married makes it look like maybe Dad will clear the charges if he’s elected.” Barbara was looking right at Bruce, but still referring to Bruce Wayne as the persona.

Another mask that he no longer wore.

“But Jim hasn’t made any stance on whether or not he’s going to clear Bruce of those crimes,” Selina said smartly.

Barbara sighed, though her shoulders relaxed. “Yes, and by doing so, he keeps the conservative end of Gotham on his side.”

“But his official position is?” Selina left the question hanging, eyes wide and the perfect picture of innocence. Barbara’s eye narrowed in Selina’s direction, and Bruce felt like he’d missed on out on an argument.

“I don’t know,” she said sternly. “Like I said to you this morning, he hasn’t said anything to me.”

Tim patted Barbara’s back as Bruce took Selina’s hand and squeezed it. “Whatever he decides, we’ll support it,” Tim said. “No offence, Bruce, but he’s not the happiest that you’re alive. Or that Jason’s coming to the wedding.”

Bruce had thought as much. Though Jim and Bruce had succeeded in getting her back, a lot of bridges had been burnt that night of the Siege and while he knew Jim would have respected him dying as a hero, he could see how the ex-detective would hold a bitterness towards Bruce for not telling him about Barbara being Batgirl and then Oracle. He thought maybe that was something he should handle before the day of the wedding because he didn’t want to make things tense for the young couple.

“It’s not like Bruce has saved Gotham and  _the world_  a couple of hundred times,” Selina ranted, stabbing at her plate. “I mean, does that not count for anything?”

“Image inducers,” Bruce said, deciding it was best to change the subject. “Jason might not need one – he’s been declared dead long enough and has changed enough from his seventeen-year-old self that it should be okay. But I will.”

“Clark has them,” Tim said. “He’s bringing them from the Watchtower.”

“Can I pick your face?” Selina asked.

Bruce gave her a pointed look, to refuse her but Selina gave him one right back. After a beat, he sighed and agreed. “Fine.”

“I’ll make good choices,” she said, but the smile on her face said that she had some terrible plan in mind.

He looked at the door hoping that, at any second, Jason and Dick would walk back in. He wasn’t worried that Dick was going to do anything irresponsible or let anything happen to Jason. He knew that for him, it was a big week too and he wouldn’t let anything get in the way of that. Watching Barbara get married to Tim was going to be painful for Dick, he had no doubt about that. But his way of dealing was to throw himself into everything WEDDING and make sure it went off without a hitch.

Clearly thinking the same thing, when Bruce looked back to his plate, he caught Barbara’s eye and she glanced at Tim as if to make sure he didn’t find her wondering about Dick. A part of him wanted to ask Barbara what she was doing, and why she was doing it. He had known her almost all her life, and he had never seen her so indecisive about anything.

She forced a smile back on her face and tucked the unruly strand of hair that kept escaping back behind her ear defensively. After, she picked up the pasta and passed it over to Bruce. “Come on, let’s eat before it gets cold.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, poor Jason. When will I stop torturing him?
> 
> So, I will tell you before I say anything else, I will never ever ask for money for this story or any story I write.
> 
> BUT... I sort of am trying to make side money... (read the above note about moving out)
> 
> So, I started a shop on teepublic.
> 
> https://www.teepublic.com/user/ithoughtslashmeanthorror
> 
> Right now it's all batman/batfamily stuff, but I'm going to put more designs in.
> 
> If any of you want a t-shirt/phone case/laptop case/pillow/tapestry or any other paraphernalia with something specific, please get in contact with me. I'm more than happy to design one... I actually am a graphic artist... can't hand draw well, but I can photoshop like nobodies business.
> 
> Also, for nothing else can you just go and see how awesomely I've organised the designs?
> 
> Anyway. Hope you enjoyed the chapter. Love you all!
> 
> ithoughtslashmeanthorror (Bianca)


	5. Comm Duty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO BOUGHT SOMETHING FROM MY STORE!
> 
> I made $20 but that's amazing considering I didn't think I'd make any money. I love you all!
> 
> And oh God.
> 
> I was looking for music to add to my writing playlist while writing this chapter (at 4am because I couldn't sleep) and typed in 'Batman' and found the Batman & Robin soundtrack. I had completely erased from my head that R Kelly wrote a song called Gotham City.
> 
> The fact it was R Kelly aside, the song was terrible. Is terrible. 
> 
> Take the lyrics:  
> "A city of justice, a city of love, a city of peace  
> For every one of us  
> We all need it, can't live without it  
> A Gotham City, oh yeah"
> 
> I can't. I can't even... 
> 
> Also, 15-year-old me lost my shit when I realised that Panic! at the Disco actually wrote a song for the Arkham games... It is now in the official playlist I have for this story.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy the chapter! I fell asleep while editing (because it was 4am and now it's 7 and I have to be at work in an hour and a half) so please correct me. 
> 
> AND THANK YOU TO SOMEONE WHO POINTED OUT THE COMMA WITH THE HAD HAD THING AND THE WAY I PUT AN APOSTROPHE ON BOYS! (It honestly, really helps me get better at grammar. I don't take offense or get upset. I genuinely need help in this department)

Seeing the inside of the Clock Tower again, Jason’s head was flung back to the night of the siege. Back to the Arkham Knight, and the confusion and anger. It didn’t help he had guilt flooding through him from the encounter with the young thief and, in that moment, he couldn’t handle it.

He walked away.

He had every intention of going back, but Dick followed him and, as they walked Dick led him to his own safe house down the road. Jason knew it was there, having had followed Nightwing one night back to it, back when he was stalking all the Bats and making his plan for the Siege. It wasn’t too far from the Clock Tower – six blocks south, towards the river that divided Bleake and Miagani Island – and when they got there, Jason let Dick shove him inside.

“I don’t come here often. I think I only have coffee and cereal,” Dick had said as they walked inside, both drenched through from the rain. There was a short hall, leading out to an open living-dining-kitchen. Dick went ahead of Jason to the kitchen area, turning on the lights and the heater.

Jason dumped his bag in the hall, turned to his left and with a savage shout smashed his fist through the plaster beneath the living room light.

Dick paused in the living room, turning around slowly to look at him. He didn’t say anything as Jason breathed heavily and stared at his fist. He didn’t say anything as Jason pulled his fist out of the plaster either, or when he dusted his knuckles off, body tense.

“So decaf?” Dick asked.

Jason huffed, stretching his fingers as they bled. “This was a mistake. Coming back to Gotham. I should have stayed in Mazatlán. I shouldn’t have gotten on that stupid plane.”

Dick nodded. “Maybe.”

Jason’s head snapped up at him, an accusatory frown on his face. He was ready to snap the pretty boy’s neck, a hundred accusations on his tongue about how Dick always thought he was better than him and how he had never wanted Jason in the first place when Dick turned away from him and kept on towards the kitchen. “What, you didn’t want me to agree with you?”

Jason opened his mouth, but the words wouldn’t come out. He didn’t know what the hell he wanted. He felt like he never did anymore.

Dick didn’t turn around, picking up coffee cups and rummaging through cupboards for sugar. “Babs wants you here. I want you here. Even _Tim_ wants you here.”

Jason relaxed slightly, right up until Dick said Tim’s name. Then his teeth ground together. “Replacement doesn’t want me here.”

“Yeah, actually, he does. Indirectly. He wants Bruce here, and he knows B won't leave you alone right now. And don’t call him that.” Dick had turned on the coffee machine in the kitchen, and went into a linen closet, pulling out towels. He threw one to Jason and kept one for himself. “So were you serious about playing Oracle for me, or what?”

Jason blinked in surprise. “What?”

Dick removed the white towel from his face and grinned. “Well, I had my nap, so I think I’m good to hit the streets.”

Jason stared at him and then looked around the place. “There’s no computer.”

“I should have one in the room, along with a spare suit,” he said. He wrapped the towel around his shoulder. “According to chatter, there’s a drug shipment being picked up tonight at the docks down the road. You in or what?”

Jason stared at Dick and the same astonishment he’d felt when Bruce asked him to fly the plane hit him in the chest. He’d offered to be on comms for Dick, sure but he hadn’t thought Dick would take him up on it, especially after everything that had just happened on the rooftop. “Okay,” he said quietly.

Dick nodded his approval. “I’m going to go get changed. Can you do me a favour? There’s a latch under the coffee table. It has weapons in it. Get them out?”

Jason nodded mutely as Dick disappeared into the bedroom of the apartment.

There were wooden floorboards throughout the place. Jason moved the coffee table – a little thing from IKEA that carried no weight – to one side and sat on the edge of the couch then did a double take to look at it. “Dick!” Jason shouted out.

There was a muffled response where Jason imagined Dick’s head half-in and half-out of his suit.

“Is this Donna’s old couch from her room at Titan Tower?”

There was another muffled response, and then a string of curses. Dick came out, half in his suit and still zipping it up from behind. “You don’t remember my nineteenth birthday when we ended up in Santa Prisca with Conner, Wally and you and Babs did tequila shots with the henchman, but you remember that’s Donna’s couch? We need to sort out your memory lapses, Jay. For the good of humanity!”

Of course, the eldest adopted child of Gotham’s billionaire took second-hand furniture. He liked weird mismatched furniture.

Jason frowned at Dick and found the latch on the floorboards. He pulled on it, and the floor rose up as a panel moved aside to show an impressive weapon display of escrima sticks, bos and shurikens in the shape of N’s. “I have a feeling the reasons why I don’t remember your birthday has less to do with Joker and more to do with tequila and henchman. And I lost my virginity on this couch, so yes, I remember it vividly.”

Dick gagged. “That’s disgusting.”

“You’re the one who has it in your apartment,” Jason muttered, pulling out weapons for Dick and handing them over without asking which ones he needed. Dick had finished zipping up his suit and was slipping the shurikens into invisible skin tight pockets. Despite the lightness of his suit, Jason could see it was thick, designed to take light blows, deflect knife attacks and even be bulletproof. But it wasn’t built to defend against impalement or stabs like Batman’s costume. There were seams where, if the right pressure was applied and the angle of the blade was…

He blinked and realised that he was trying to figure out how best to injure Dick in his suit. He paused. “Are you sure you want me on comms?”

Dick frowned and looked at Jason. “I’m sure. Are you sure you want to be on comms?”

Jason looked at Dick carefully. Even with his nap, he didn’t look great. He considered that maybe Dick shouldn’t be going out at all, and his gut churned the same way it had the morning he went after Joker. _Stay in bed,_ that feeling told him. _Stay in bed and don’t get up today._

“Yeah, I’ll be on comms,” he said.

Dick nodded and went back to the room, coming out a moment later with a laptop and a headset. “I’ve got a camera in my mask. You’ll be able to see what I see.” Dick handed Jason the laptop, and he took it so Dick could put his mask on. “Dammit. It’s not sticky.”

“I have spirit gum,” Jason murmured, and he went into his bag, unzipping it.

The cape of his suit fell out, and he paused, looking up at Dick. “Don’t even ask.”

Dick put his hands up in innocence. “I mean I wasn’t going to ask anything. Just say that it’s awfully black and _bat_ -like.”

Jason rummaged through his bag and pulled out a stick of spirit gum, holding it out for Dick. “Talia designed it… I tried it on. It fits. Well.”

“Talia? As in al Ghul?”

Jason realised he hadn’t told Dick that yet. About Nanda Parbat or the fact she knew he was alive from the beginning. Bruce had figured it out, and they spoke about it a bit in the last few months, but not much. He could see his mentor’s veins bulge in his neck when he thought about it for too long and he couldn’t help but be upset by it.

If Bruce had known about him, especially while he was still in Arkham, things would have been different. Maybe she should have given him peace instead of the suit. But he couldn’t change the past, and the suit was the only consolation prize he was going to get out of the dead Daughter of the Demon.

“It’s a long story that I’m not in the mood to repeat right now. Maybe later, when I’m drunk?”

Dick reached across him and tugged the suit out, twisting it in his hands. “It has a freaking cowl.”

Jason snatched it back and made a face. “So?”

“Why do you need spirit gum for a cowl?” Dick asked incredulously.

Jason blushed, not having thought about it. He just always carried spirit gum, used to wearing a mask. He had even taken up wearing one under the helmet sometimes. “Shut up, Dickwing.”

Dick laughed, throwing the suit back in his face and he relaxed. He put on his mask, sticking it to his face and beamed. “You know, if you do wear the cowl, you’re going to have to come up with another name.” He walked over to the window and climbed up onto the sill. “I like Red Jay.”

He swung out of the apartment, onto the fire escape, then leapt off and into the night. Jason stared at his back in astonishment. He shook his head and stuck the headphone in his ear and quickly started up the laptop. There was a _beep_ signalling they were connected, and Jason quickly said, “My name is Jason. Don’t you think _Jay_ is a bit on the nose?”

“My mom called me Robin.”

“But only _you_ knew that.”

“Red Jay keeps to the whole bird thing. And your suit is red. And so is your favourite colour.”

Jason blushed as he got the batcomputer up and it asked for a login. “Have the passwords changed?” Jason asked.

There was a long pause, and then Nightwing replied tightly, “Try your login.”

Jason’s fingers paused over the keys and then, from memory, he typed in his username and password for the batcomputers. “He didn’t delete them?” Neither of them had to say who they were talking about.

“He couldn't touch your stuff. I mean, he never walked into your bedroom,” Nightwing answered, honestly. “No, wait, once. After your funeral. He spent the night in there and then he never went in again. Robin and I would hang out there sometimes and talk. Mostly about you. He was sort of obsessed with you.”

Jason thought that was weird as he turned on the cameras to Nightwing’s mask. “Obsessed? Like Single White Female?” He turned the feed on just as Nightwing landed on a building on the south end of the island. He pulled up a map, and the mission reports Dick was working on in his case files and a satellite of the area so he could monitor anyone trying to sneak up on Dick. “And which case number is this?”

“Eleven-forty-two. And not Single White Female. You know you were at Gotham Academy at the same time?”

Jason squished his face up as he tried to remember Tim Drake at school. All he could see though was a shorter version of the Replacement Robin carrying a bookbag. “We were?”

“Yeah. Apparently, he was getting bullied once, and you knocked the guys out.”

It sounded familiar but not specific. Jason defended a lot of younger kids from bullies. It was the only time Bruce condoned him using violence at school, and maybe he got a kick out of knocking those rich snobs around.

He read the case file and made a face. “Black Mask’s gang are into drugs?”

“They’re into everything right now. They’re the only ones who weren’t hit too bad by the Siege, so they’re branching out while they’ve got the numbers.” Nightwing was creeping along the edge of the building and jumped off and onto a bunch of shipping containers. Jason hacked into the dock’s shipping manifests.

“So Gotham King’s Shipping got a new delivery from China yesterday, and it was moved across to the east end of the docks this morning. I’m putting a geotag on your vision.”

It was like going back in time. He did remember these things, and though the programs had been updated and worked faster, his fingers were working on muscle memory. The blue geotag lit up on the camera feed, in the shape of an N. Bruce’s had lit up like the batsignal, while his Robin one was a red R.

Tim’s was probably the same…

“Bruce said Robin figured out who we were. How?” Jason asked.

“He’s smart,” Nightwing replied, following the tag. “He’s more of a detective than Batman. He saw me performing once when he was three, and then saw Robin do a flip and put it all together then. He has an eidetic memory and was reading and talking when he was even younger than that. When he was fifteen and came to us, it was because he figured out some of the places Joker pretended to hide you and followed clues that Bat hadn’t picked up.”

Jason frowned. “Bruce said that, but I don’t completely believe it. He must have been in shock or something because no way is this kid smarter than Batman.”

“I was in shock myself about the fact some random kid knocked on our door and said, ‘I know where Jason is’. I was angry at Bruce about it.” He spoke more seriously again, as he ran across shipment containers of blue, green and red. He lowered his voice. “I was furious at Bruce about you. For a really long time.”

Jason couldn’t imagine it. He had a hard time imagining anything from that time because Joker had put so much false information in his head, and he’d believed it so thoroughly it was hard to get rid of those thoughts. “It still sounds single white female, if you ask me. He stalked me only to become me.”

“Confession time. I went to where you were crashing once, in that run-down theatre and I found _your_ collection of _my_ shuriken’s. You didn’t have a single Batman one. I know you were obsessed with Robin too. So you Single White Femaled me first.”

Jason felt the top of his ears heat up, and he rolled his eyes. “I didn’t stalk you, or Batman. I happened to walk by the Batmobile one day and thought selling Bat-tyres might get me a decent dinner for a change. Timmy’s the heir to the Drake fortune. Why the hell would that kid need to be Robin?”

“That’s not fair. You don’t even know what he went through before he came to us.”

Jason scoffed but shut his mouth when he spotted something on the camera. “According to the satellites, there are lead-lined shipping containers ahead. I’ve marked them on the map,” he said more seriously.

“Okidoke, Red Jay,” Dick answered less seriously.

Jason rolled his eyes. “Don’t call me that. It’s not a thing.”

“But if I say it enough, I can make it a thing.”

Nightwing got to the containers and began to pick the lock on the door. Jason watched him on the satellite, making sure no one approached. “About Robin…” Nightwing began.

Jason began to groan when Dick cut him off.

“I told Batman he should take on another protégé.”

Jason stiffened, staring at the screen. He could hear Dick’s soft breaths in his ears. “Bats told me some of your trauma was related to all of that. Seeing another guy in your suit… the first time they went out together was to find you. Batman gave him one of your old masks to wear because we had nothing else at the time. But then he told the kid to go home. I asked him to come back and help us find you. I told Batman to give him your mask. Our mask… He was a good kid. Still is.”

Jason didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

There was a click on the other side, and Nightwing sighed then began to open the door when the camera jerked to the front and a _clang_ slammed Dick’s head against the container. “Dick!” Jason shouted, standing up.

But in the next second, Nightwing got up and turned around, raising his arms over his head to defend from the flurry of fists that beat down on him. Jason swallowed and observed, fingers flicking towards his bag where his suit was.

Nightwing was up against the wall, grunting as he took the blows until the attacker paused. It was only a brief pause, but it was long enough that Nightwing took the advantage to drop down and swipe his leg out, knocking the attacker off their feet. He rolled forward, and Jason sat back down. Nightwing paused, staring the camera down at the cement then raised a fist and crashed it to the ground.

Jason blinked, lost as Nightwing flew back up to his feet and roundhouse kicked… thin air.

Then he took another punch at thin air and threw more thin air over his head. “What are you fighting?” Jason asked.

“Goons,” Nightwing grunted in reply between blows.

“Are they invisible?” he asked, fingers already typing to look at the satellite images. But even from above, Nightwing was fighting nothing.

“No. Very visible.”

“Well, I can’t see them on the satellite, and I definitely can’t see them on your camera.”

“Hang on.” There was a _thunk,_ and a _crack_ as Dick landed two more blows, and then he stopped, breathing heavily and looking around in a fighting stance, waiting for something to appear. “You really can’t see the three giant unconscious bodies around me?”

There was nothing but cement around him. At least, that was all Jason could see. “You think it’s some kind of tech meta running interference?” Nightwing asked. “Haven’t fought a tech meta yet… Other than Cyborg, but that was training, and he’s not really a meta just a–”

But as Dick spoke a terrible, _horrible_ thought occurred to Jason. One that made him want to hurl and punch a wall, possibly at the same time. “Are they all dressed in grey?”

“Yeah. It’s an odd choice for a uniform. Not as stealthy as black.”

Jason’s stomach plummeted. “It’s optic camouflage. Their suits are undetectable to cameras, including infrared heat tracking. It also scrambles frequencies on the batcomputer and several government agencies.”

There was no response from Dick.

Because he realised what Jason already knew.

They were using Jason’s technology. Technology that he had designed specifically for use against Batman during the Siege and had armed his militia with.

“Well, I better hurry up then.”

He went back to the shipping container and went inside. The front few rows were stacked with children’s toys, but Nightwing slipped deeper between the stackers sideways and, after some rummaging, found a briefcase inside. “Got it.”

“Get it back here,” Jason said, now keen to see what was inside, being guarded by men dressed in his tech. “But get a scan of the guys' faces before you leave. Just take their hoods off.”

Nightwing slipped back out of the container and pushed the hoods off the heads of the henchman, twisting their heads around so Jason could see three faces floating over a mass of nothing. All three of them were large enough to indicate Dick hadn’t been fighting skinny nobodies but at least seven-foot goons. “No one can say you did things half-assed, Jay. If I turn my scanners on, they really are invisible.”

 With an angry grunt, Jason replied, “Yeah. Thank God, I’m thorough.” He began running their faces through facial recognition. “Okay. Got it.” Nightwing began to make his retreat as the first of the faces began to ping. “Morris DiMaggio, Curtis Delaney, and Dillard Whyte. Whyte was working for the Penguin and DiMaggio was originally in Two-Face’s gang. Curtis’s little brother Brian Delaney has connections to Freeze, but Curtis did one job for Riddler years ago before going out on his own.”

“They’re probably working with Black Mask since the other rogues are still locked up.”

Jason didn’t answer, staring at where their bodies should have been but were invisible. He had designed the tech. He had created the perfect weapons to go up against Batman. They hadn’t worked to defeat him, but everyone could see that night that they’d slowed him down. Anger bubbled under his skin, and he considered that maybe they were being used to deal drugs.

Nightwing swung back into the window not too long later and deposited the suitcase on the kitchen bench, and Jason winced at the sight of the giant bruise on the side of his face. “That looks like it hurts,” Jason said.

Dick peeled off his mask gingerly and narrowed his eyes, but it wouldn’t quite crinkle on the side of the swelling. “You think? Can you open this lock while I get some ice?”

Jason didn’t answer, just got to work opening the case.

It wasn’t too difficult. It was titanium and had two combination locks on either end and after a quick scan to see there weren’t any trip locks, Jason went into the kitchen, took out a knife and used it to break the whole thing open. Dick approached him from behind, tipping his head to the side and looking a little comical with a bag of peas pressed to the side of his face. “Very delicate.”

Jason ignored him and pushed the lid open and froze, staring in abject horror. Dick frowned and leant over his shoulder. “So I know those aren’t drugs, but what the hell are they?”

“A Nimbus Generator.” He looked back at Dick, and his fists tightened on the case, containing the battery that powered the cloudburst on the night of the Siege. “Someone’s selling my tech.”

* * *

“What are you doing?” Selina asked as Bruce got out of bed. It was four in the morning. He sat up on the edge of the bed and pressed his face in his hands as she sat up and stared at his back.

None of the kids had asked Bruce or Selina about their sleeping arrangements. No one commented that they sat a little closer together or that sometimes she ran her fingers through his hair and that he slung his arm around her shoulder.

They all just accepted it, although there were a few subtle jokes at their expense.

She touched his back and Bruce couldn’t help but flinch, his body wired for a fight. “Bruce,” her voice was still rough with sleep but soft all the same. “Talk to me.”

Bruce wasn’t sure what to say. He’d woken up and was on high alert. He felt tense. He felt like something was going to go wrong. “He brought his suit,” Bruce said in the end, although he wasn’t certain those thoughts had been running through his head.

Selina drooped back in the bed, throwing her arm over her head. “So did you,” she said quietly.

Bruce flinched, and his head snapped to Selina. He hadn’t shown her the bag with his new design in it. He hadn’t told her about it either. But she wore a wry smile on her face as he glared at her accusatorily and she shrugged. “Like father, like son,” she said. When his expression still didn’t budge she sighed. “Please, Bruce. You were in the cave for days at a time, and all those designs disappeared from the house. All that was missing was you comparing swatches in the living room with Alfred. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what you’re up to.”

He groaned and rubbed his face. “I’m not twitchy.”

“What?” Selina asked.

He grunted and shook his head, getting out of bed. “Nothing. Just go back to sleep Selina. I’m fine. Honestly.” He went and grabbed his robe and Selina huffed, turning back into the pillow.

“Whatever. I need sleep. Just so you know I stole my outfit for the wedding last night, and that boutique had tighter security than some museums I’ve been in. That’s right, Bruce. You and Jason aren’t the only ones trying to hide your secrets in your wardrobes.” She mumbled the end as she drifted off into sleep as quickly as she’d come out of it, and Bruce sighed and watched her from the doorway.

She was beautiful, and the fact that she was his with no question or argument was hard to fathom. He closed the door gently and shuffled down the hall of one of the other Clock Tower apartments and passed the room which they’d set aside for Jason but was still empty.

Bruce had messaged Dick before he slept and he noticed that Dick had replied only an hour before saying that they were fine and in Dick's safe house. Bruce then asked if Jason was sleeping and Dick replied with an eye roll emoji and a photo of Jason sitting on the couch glaring down the barrel of the lens.

He looked… defeated. The dark circles under his eyes were more pronounced and the way his arms were laid on his knees, palms up imploringly. It made Bruce’s jaw click together, his fingers tighten on his phone that was probably close to breaking.

Other than defeated, Jason was annoyed clearly that Dick was taking a photo of him, and probably without explaining why. Although, maybe Dick did explain why and that was why he was annoyed.

Bruce went into the kitchen and made a coffee before leaving the apartment. There were three elevators in the building, but only one led up to the penthouse. Bruce took it, scanning his eyes to let him up to her workspace, and accepted that Barbara would get angry about him intruding in her space. That was for later though.

The cases Dick had shown him on the jet were still in his head. He stepped inside the Clock Tower and paused to look around. The last time he’d been there, he had been investigating her disappearance during the Siege, and the place had been in less than great shape after Jason had stormed through it to kidnap Barbara. She had fixed it up, but he couldn’t help but notice that all the things she usually kept hidden were on display.

Her computers were out, her Batgirl uniform was on display, and the Oracle logo was shining in neon next to a poster of the Flying Grayson’s.

The green from the computer screen glowed dimly around the room and cast a long shadow as Bruce approached it. He sat down, logged into the Justice League servers and began to work.

Half an hour later, just as he was in the middle of reading Clark’s case file on a League missile that had gone rogue, the elevator ground behind him. He didn’t look up or react, not overly concerned but when it did halt, and the doors cranked open, he picked up his cold coffee and sipped at it.

“What are you doing?” Barbara asked Bruce when she found him.

“Hnn?” He looked up, distracted, and Barbara smirked, rolling into the room. “Good morning,” he said after a minute.

She rolled up beside him. “You know, I usually hurt people who hack my computers.”

“Hacking implies that I don’t have the password,” he said. “Also, I’m on the League’s computers.”

“Oh?” Barbara read the mission report. “Checking up on Dick?”

“I was. He’s taken too much on board. I’ve sent out his mission briefs to some of the others for assistance.”

Barbara hummed, still reading over his shoulder. “Batwing, Batwoman, and Flamebird? Family only then?”

“I know they’re in town.”

Barbara scoffed. “Please. You’re still having a hard time handing over Gotham to outsiders.”

“Most of those outsiders are your wedding guests. Alfred taught me it’s rude to invite company and ask them to clean up.” He chuckled when Barbara huffed at his obstinacy.

“So what? Now you’re checking up on Superman? Going to reallocate his cases too?”

Bruce squinted back at Clark’s other reports, having a hard time understanding why the League acted so late on the intel that a new alien had crash landed in Mexico. “I actually just might. Diana would have been more efficient here.”

“Oh wow. You’re ridiculous. Move over.” She wheeled closer to him, nudging his chair with her legs.

Bruce raised his eyebrow. “You’re not supposed to be working this week.”

Barbara tapped the side of her glasses. “If I really wanted to, old man, I could just take over using these. But my eyeballs start to hurt after a while typing that way, so just let me through.”

“Old man?” Bruce growled, but he stood up and moved away from the computer, taking the chair too so Barbara could slide her chair beneath the desk. “Why do you all insist on calling me that?”

“You’re greying, B,” Barbara said, typing away.

“No, I’m not,” he scoffed. He had one or two greys on his head and a thin streak in his beard when he grew it out, but he’d seen more on men half his age. He leant over her chair. “What are you doing? They’re going to berate me for letting you work.”

“I know. Apparently, I’m supposed to be soaking in milk and counting rose petals or something.” Barbara rolled her eyes. “We have excellent wedding organisers, and my dress isn’t going to fit any better, so I’m bored out of my mind looking for something to do. Damn, Dickie _has_ taken on a lot this week.” She pulled up the mission reports, a frown on her face. “Maybe I should take some of these jobs over.”

The twinge pulled at the back of Bruce’s head again, and the suit in his bag pulled at him. “I can help,” he said, voice soft. Barbara’s head snapped towards him. She studied him, to see how serious he was. When she realised, she blinked.

“Get into a Batsuit? You? Now? On the week of our wedding?” Barbara asked, astonished. “Bruce, you _know_ that’s just asking for trouble.”

Bruce did. Still, he just crossed his arms. “I have other suits.”

Barbara stared at him then shook her head, rolling her chair over the slightest bit. She pulled out a second keyboard, and split the screens in front of her, pushing everything Bruce had been working on to the second. “You’re crazy, Old Man. Plain crazy.” She handed him the keyboard, and he decided to take the win and kept reading Clark’s report about an alien bounty hunter and Blue Beetle.

Barbara made a second batch of coffee with a machine by the window, and Bruce made the third pot an hour later. Bruce solved two missing person cases, sending the intel to Bette Kane for her to pick up the kids, while Barbara secured NASA from an attack from the Calculator.

It was peaceful.

At around seven, when he thought it was a more reasonable hour, he texted Jason to see if he was okay. He messaged back that he was fine and not to worry.

“You ever think about getting on comms?” Barbara asked quietly at some point.

They could both hear Gotham by day, in full swing outside the Clock Tower. Bruce paused in his typing, and so did Barbara, and children were getting on school buses and taxi horns blaring on every corner. He looked over at her. “You do important work,” he began, and Barbara rolled her eyes, looking back at her screen.

“But no one likes monitor duty,” she said, typing away. She hunched her shoulders, clearly hurt by his comment or at least, the words she read in between them. “I hear the arguments the League has about it.”

Bruce closed his eyes and winced at how it sounded. Barbara couldn’t go out there and fight crime. She had no choice. Bruce did, and he was uncomfortable with the idea. “It _is_ important. Just as important.”

“I get it,” Barbara said, only a little snappily. She winced, and her fingers paused again. She looked at Bruce. “Do you know how many teams I run comms for now?”

Bruce frowned, confused by the turn of conversation. “Gotham and Tim’s Titans?”

“All Titans,” she corrected him. “And I’m the back up for the League and the Justice League UK branch. I’m not even in the League. I asked Clark to stop letting people nominate me because I don’t want to be listed on any roster. Even so, Oracle and the Clock Tower is a central hub for almost every team on heroes without telepathy. I run intelligence, keep files secure, update firewalls and run tighter security than the Pentagon all from this building.”

It was news to Bruce, but it wasn’t surprising. Barbara was always clever and good at whatever she put her mind to. “You’re good at what you do.”

“The best,” she snapped. “And now all these teams depend on me and my technology. I’m their lifeline.”

Bruce raised his eyebrow. “This is a bad thing?” he asked.

Barbara didn’t answer. She was staring at her lap, and her swallow was thick. “What if I stopped?” she asked. Bruce wasn’t sure what she meant, so he waited. “You trained us to take your place if the worse should happen,” Barbara said. “Oliver has Roy and Mia. The Titans have each other when they’re away. Everyone has someone who can take their place when they’re gone but not me. I can’t leave.”

She moved her hand to her wheelchair and pushed the wheel back and forth as if it was jammed on something. As if she was stuck there. “We would manage,” Bruce answered eventually.

Barbara’s head snapped to Bruce, and he moved his chair around and shifted her and her chair, so they were face to face. Bruce took her hands in his and squeezed her fingers. “When I bought this for you... when I offered to help you build this, I didn’t do it because I wanted you to stay. I did it because I thought you wanted this.”

Barbara winced. “I do want it.”

“But you want out?” he asked.

Barbara opened her mouth and let it shut again. “What if I wanted to do something else?”

Bruce considered it. Barbara was capable. He wasn’t sure what it was she had in mind, but he knew whatever it was she could accomplish it. “Then we would manage. And we would help. With whatever you need. Equipment, location, transportation… you tell me what you need, and I’ll make it happen. If anyone has an issue, I’ll deal with it. Understood?”

Barbara gave him a watery smile. She looked up at the computers, sniffing back tears. “Dad asked me to give it up. Oracle. The life. Tim too. He said he wouldn’t tell anyone, but he wouldn’t be accountable if any anti-vigilante laws went up because of the Siege. He said, ‘as mayor, or as commissioner, I’ll have to follow what the people want,’ and left it at that.”

After the previous night’s conversation, he wasn’t surprised. “I’ve dealt with your father before.”

“He was so mad, Bruce,” Barbara whispered. “When we finally hashed it out over Batgirl and everything… I don’t even remember what happened that night. He slammed the door on his way out and then, his campaign manager, Isla, called me the next day and asked for us to make face at an event and it was like none of it ever happened.”

Bruce nodded and leant over, grabbing a tissue box. He held it out to Barbara. “I’ll talk to Jim. I should have told him about you a long time ago.”

Barbara took his hand, and Bruce thought back to the first time he held her hand. When she was a little girl, who afraid of being alone and crept out of her apartment, walked through Gotham, turned on the bat signal and waited for her. “I wouldn’t change a thing,” she said, squeezing his fingers. She looked down at her legs, and half laughed. “Not even this. It didn’t make me stronger. It just made me realise how strong I always was.”

Bruce agreed that she was strong, but he would go back and change it if he could. Joker didn’t target Barbara because she was Batgirl, but she did target him because Batman worked with Jim.

In that second, he saw himself in Barbara. In the way she pushed herself, in the way she obsessed and how she dealt by pushing everyone away. By keeping herself guarded and holding how she felt in her heart until it ached and spilt over into hurt.

He let go of Barbara’s hand and looked at the computers. It could wait. The work had done its job to ease the twitchiness for the time being. “You know what I need right now? Breakfast.”

Barbara smiled crookedly at him. “You need a break?”

He didn’t want one, but she needed one. “We both do. It’s not rose petals, but it is taking better care of yourself. You don’t want to be exhausted at your wedding, right?”

Barbara sighed, taking back her hand and locking up her computer. “Fine. But wheel me there. If I’m going to start indulging, my first demand is to be pushed everywhere I need to go.” She crossed her arms over her chest, throwing her nose up in the air but smiled teasingly beneath.

“Of course,” Bruce said, getting up out of his chair. “Anything for the bride.”

He pushed her out of the Clock Tower, and to the elevator. They called it and entered, riding back down to Barbara’s apartment. “You think Alfred’s in yet?” Barbara asked.

Bruce looked at his watch. “He said he’d be here around nine. That was an hour ago.”

“Is it rude to ask him to cook breakfast for us?”

“Yes.”

“Can we still ask him to?”

“Do you have a waffle iron?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t see why not.”

“Tim wouldn’t let me buy one… Is there something waffle related I’m not aware of?”

Bruce patted her shoulder as the elevator rang and pushed her out of the elevator. “It’s a family secret. I can only tell you after you become a Wayne.”

Barbara’s smile faltered for a second. She looked up at Bruce, her eyes watering over. “I’ll hold you to that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fact: For many years, I thought the lyrics to 'Don't Bring me Down' by The Electric Light Orchestra's lyrics were, 'Don't Bring me doooown... Bruce.' until I was at a dinner where I was told that it was a made-up word, and that I'm not the only one who hears 'Bruce'. 
> 
> I only mention this because it's the playlist of songs I listen to when I'm writing and sometimes it comes on and I think of the Robins singing it when Bruce is annoying them...
> 
> P.S. Just an update... I was late to work because I uploaded this chapter. It's 8:46am and I just walked through the door. 
> 
> Love you all!


	6. Pauli’s Diner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know I have a few people here who haven't played Arkham Knight. I try to accommodate for you guys in writing and I tried to explain what happened in Pauli's Diner but it got too clunky sooo I'm linking you to a video.
> 
> I think you might need it to make sense of this...I don't know. I'm from that perspective of, 'I don't remember what it was like not to play this game'....
> 
> Anyway, here it is:
> 
> https://youtu.be/LHSObef1RIw

Jason’s phone beeping woke him up.

He squinted against the light and wondered why it was streaming so brightly into the room. He usually kept the blinds shut, but then he realised he could hear coffee gurgling in a pot and the familiar sounds of cereal raining in a bowl.

He opened his eyes and the familiar aches of having slept on a couch, and he tried to stretch them out of his spine.

That was when he remembered the night before like some bad dream. They’d stayed up until the early hours of the morning trying to figure out who had stolen his tech. Jason thought maybe he’d gotten two hours of sleep and he was starting to understand why Dick had looked so shit.

The smell of morning coffee got Jason to sit up, and he looked over to Dick, standing with a pair of sunglasses on, but humming and bopping his head to something in his headphones. Jason winced at the giant shiner on his face. “It is seven in the morning. Why are you dancing?” he groaned.

No one should ever look that chirpy, Jason decided. Especially with a swollen face.

“Good morning to you too sunshine,” Dick whistled. “You know, the way you look, I would have thought you were the one jumping over buildings last night.”

Jason rubbed his face, picking up his phone. “Your couch sucks.”

“Well you’re the one who decided to sleep there and reminisce about old times,” he said, unable to hide the amusement from his voice. “I did offer you the bed.”

Ignoring him, Jason flicked through his phone, reading Bruce’s message asking if he was okay. He wrote back he was fine and threw his phone on the coffee table and his arm over his face. Jason considered going back to sleep, but he knew he couldn’t. The laptop and comms were still where he left them the night before, and Dick put a coffee down next it all as Jason dramatically let his arm fall to the ground and tilted his head to Dick who was staring down at Jason a little more seriously. “You okay?” he asked, his voice a softer. “You were still pretty tense when I went to bed.”

The day was unusually bright for Gotham, and Jason squinted through it. It was hard not to be tense. Between the girl mugging them and the stolen tech, returning to Gotham was just a giant reminder of all the bullshit he’d pulled and how much it all still confused him.

The issue was that he’d felt so justified in what he’d done all those months ago — walking into Pauli’s and setting of Scarecrow’s fear gas. When the police officer started shooting, killing all those people, he had stepped out of the diner, bell jingling above his head and he hadn’t felt a single thing. Not an ounce of guilt, or a drop of regret. All he could picture at the time was Bruce, sliding on his mask and walking into his trap and that had given him such a smug satisfaction.

 _You don’t even know what you’re walking into, old man,_ he remembered thinking, taking out his radio to tell his lieutenants to start setting up the roadblocks.

The people he killed didn’t matter.

At that point, all he cared about was the statement it made.

“Jay?”

“Hmm?” Jason looked up at Dick and winced at the concern etched in his face. He shook off the achy feeling in his chest tried to breathe again. “I’m fine. Your eye looks like an eggplant. You’re going to pick up the sympathy dates at the wedding if you go looking like that.”

Dick shrugged. “Please. You think it’s the first time I’ve had to wear foundation to a family occasion?”

Jason smiled, and he felt like a weight had lifted from his shoulder as an image of Dick in front of a mirror with Barbara’s makeup kit came back to him. “No. I distinctly remember you putting putty and lipstick on before my fifteenth birthday to hide a cut lip. It was too orange.” Dick laughed and sipped his coffee, sitting next to Jason and kicking his feet up on the table. He tilted his head back and rolled his shoulders.

Bruce was right. He did look exhausted. Despite the trademark Dick Grayson aloofness, he shouldn’t have been punched the night before. It was an easy dodge, had he been on high alert. “You busy today?” Jason asked casually.

“I have a suit fitting at ten-thirty I need to get ready for. I’m picking up Tim and Conner. Then I’ve got to be at work. Then I’m back doing the night shift at the station in Blüdhaven tonight. Roy’s going to look out for Gotham.”

Jason nodded and figured at least he would be with his police partner would have his back. “Well, I guess I should get back to Clock Tower then.”

“Yeah, about that. I saw someone at the Clock Tower was going through my files last night and it’s probably Bruce. So I haven’t put anything about what we found online, so maybe don’t mention it?”

Jason wasn’t keen to bring any of it up with Bruce anyway. “I’m okay with that. I don’t need to be quizzed or analysed by anyone right now.”

Dick hesitated. “Thanks for your help last night anyway. I didn’t know what it was going to turn out to be, but your insight into all of it is still useful.”

Jason nodded, fist tightening despite himself. “I want to help. It’s my tech. I built it to be able to defeat Batman. It might not have worked, but it did slow him down enough that it makes it dangerous in the wrong hands.”

“Agreed. I could use a hand.” Dick held his coffee and spun his finger around the rim of the glass. “Are you going to be okay going to the Clock Tower? You turned green last night.”

He wasn’t surprised. The idea of going back there made him feel green.feel green.

“Babs says she forgives me. I have countless text messages to prove it.” Jason flipped his phone over in his hands. He played with it, picking up his coffee and taking a sip. “This is hard.”

Dick patted his back. “No one expected this week to be easy.”

They sat quietly, barely moving other than to drink their respective cups of coffee. “Are you going straight to the Clock Tower?” Jason asked.

Dick nodded. “I have to swing by GCPD first. Drop off some evidence I collected last night. But I can walk up with you.”

“Wouldn’t you have to double back to get changed into your Nightwing stuff?”

“I can just wear it underneath my civvies.”

Jason shook his head. “No. It’s fine.” He stood up and chugged the rest of his coffee. “I’m going to go now, anyway. Maybe I can make it in time for real breakfast.”

Dick snorted. “You know Alfie’s not here yet? It’s going to be Tim or Barbara cooking.”

Jason thought back and shook his head. “Never had Tim’s cooking and don’t remember Barbara’s oddly enough.”

“Lucky you,” Dick said. “And Tim’s version of breakfast is coffee in bulk.”

Jason shrugged. “I’ll make breakfast then. Either way. I want to clear my head before I get there, and you’re charming and all Dickhead, but you talk way too much.”

Dick rolled his eyes. “Okay. Only if you’re sure, take the laptop and gear with you in case I need you on comms. I’ll see you later when I get Tim.”

“Sure,” Jason nodded, grabbing his jacket. He picked up the notorious duffle from the night before and forced a smile on his face. “See you later.”

Dick’s smiled too, softly. “See you later, Jaybird.” He said it purely because the novelty hadn’t worn off for him. Jason’s stomach twisted with guilt because Dick shouldn’t have looked at him like that. Like he was some sort of miracle.

He forced himself to school his features into a smile, then left the apartment, squeezing the duffle straps.

It was too early in the morning for any of Gotham’s thieves to be active. They were all probably sleeping in after a night of pickpocketing. But still, he tried not to let a repeat performance of the night before happen again.

Dick’s apartment was six blocks up from the Clock Tower on Elliot Avenue. In the light of day, he started to notice things he hadn’t before. Like the construction he’d saw the night before in the middle of the road that he’d assumed was just standard Gotham street work, were road workers set up around a bomb blast crater in the middle of the street. He recognised the damage from the tank drones he’d sent after Bruce. He looked up, and parts of there were scaffolding holding up buildings he’d set bombs on.

Set up himself.

He winced and looked down at his feet, trying to block out the world.

He had done this. He had done it all.

Without overthinking it, Jason went down into the subway at the next block, jogging down the steps. He wasn’t good at thinking too deeply about things, but there was a place where he wanted to go by himself

Without Bruce. Without Dick’s looks of concern.

He knew they would panic if they knew, but he had at least an hour before anyone realised, he was missing.

He jumped into the first train that took him to Miagani Island and dug his hand into his bag.

The train system had changed. There were no more direct trains, a guard at the second stop told him. “If you want to go to Miagani Island, go to the old GCPD stop, and change over to the D line. Those giant plants have gone in and out of the C-line, and you can’t cross it. They said they’d have it emptied by Christmas, but those plants are freakish. No amount of weed killer gonna get them.”

At the changeover, Jason couldn’t help but feel like he was being watched. He kept looking over his shoulder. Trying to see someone following him, but there was no one there. All the faces on the train and the platform kept changing, and he couldn’t see anyone behind him. _Just paranoid,_ he thought to himself, and he got on the next train that took him to Grand Avenue station.

The station exit brought him up to the food strip. It was near the business district and, though it was too early for pickpockets, the morning rush was bustling. Men and women in suits were scrambling to get to their offices, and a few of them were picking up coffees and bagels for breakfast.

Jason pulled his hood down over his head and crossed the road, down a familiar path.

Growing up, Pauli’s Diner was always full in the morning.

Police, office workers, construction workers and the lot would line up out the door for a quick coffee and a bagel. It always smelt like bacon and grease, and there was a friendly waitress ready to take your order.

It was a Gotham institution.

Jason stepped inside and grimaced.

The place was desolate.

The waitress behind the counter, in her yellow uniform and a pen stuck in her hair, was staring at her phone. There was one man in there, reading his newspaper, but that was all.

He walked up to the counter, and the girl looked up at him, huffing and standing up straight. “Grab a seat. I’ll bring you a cuppa’ joe.”

Jason nodded. “Thanks.”

He walked around the room, passed the man behind the paper, and slipped into the same seat he’d been in the night of the siege; right where he’d set off Scarecrow’s fear gas.

The ‘A’ he’d scratched into the table was gone. Someone had buffed it out. Someone had fixed the broken tables and chairs, and the tiles that had been ripped off the wall were replaced.

It looked almost the same as when he’d sat down that night.

Jason took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to remember that night and all the faces in the place.

He was trying to see if he could remember seeing a couple that looked somewhat like the girl from the night before or any couple sitting in there. There had been, one at the booth closest to the exit, the woman wearing a leather jacket and the man looking as if he’d stepped out of a board meeting. But neither of them had looked old enough to have children.

“You want decaf?”

Jason opened his eyes and looked up at the waitress. Arlene, her nametag read. He shook his head, and she poured him a cup of caffeinated coffee, then looked him up and down. “No one sits here,” she said.

Jason raised his eyebrow. “What?”

“Not since that night,” she continued, looking the table up and down. “That police officer. This is where he got doused. The Psycho with the fear gas sat right there ‘parently. No one’s sat there since. Not that they’ve known or nothing like that. It’s just like there’s an aura.”

Jason shifted uncomfortably. Said Psycho, didn’t know what to reply. “I can move?” he offered finally.

Arlene shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me, sweetie. Just been a bummer around here since.”

“Were you working that night?” he asked, hesitantly.

“No. That was Sharon; God rest her soul. Such a sweetheart, that one. Single mom. Got two girls, Becca and Julie. Those two ended up in Gotham’s Wayward Children, I think but the oldest ain’t too far off from being an adult.” Arlene tugged a pencil out of her hair. “Not that you want to hear about any of that sad stuff. What are you eatin’, hun?”

Jason wondered if it had been Sharon’s daughter who he’d encountered the night before, but that made no sense. The girl had said that both her parents had died in Pauli’s. He cleared his throat. “Um… just the two eggs, meat and fries.”

“Bacon, sausage or the meat patty?”

“Bacon and sausages, please.”

“That’s gonna be extra.”

Jason nodded. “Sure.”

“Scrambled or fried?”

“Fried.”

“Sounds a bit like a heart attack.”

“I think I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll have the same.” Jason’s head snapped up as the man with the newspaper stood up from his seat, tucking the Gotham Gazette under his arm and his coffee mug in his hand. “Only scrambled with a side of fried tomatoes, if you could Arlene.”

“Y’want another coffee, Commissioner?” Arlene asked as Jim Gordon left his booth and sat across from Jason in his.

“I could do with a top up, Arlene,” he replied, offering out his cup. He smiled kindly up at her and Jason’s breath quickened, his fingers gripping the edge of the table. “Maybe some water for the table too. Still or sparkling, Jason?”

Jason swallowed. Jim’s eyes were hard beneath the smile he was shooting him.

He was angry.

There was so much anger in his face.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Sounds good.”

Jim lifted an eyebrow and then looked up at Arlene. “Still it is.”

“Oh, you two know each other. That’s nice,” Arlene smiled. “Been a while since we had friends coming here. Coffee’s on the house, and I’ll bring your food right up.” She tucked the pen back in her hair and left them alone, staring at each other.

Jason’s head was spinning, and he couldn’t string a thought together. He hadn’t expected or even thought that he’d see anyone he knew at Pauli’s. He had just planned to go, see it, and go home. That was it. That was all he wanted to do. It was too much. It was–

“If it weren’t for the fact my daughter is begging me not to do it, I would be dragging your ass to jail right now.” Jim looked him up and down, studying every scratch and scar. “I’m still tempted.”

Jason sunk in his booth rubbing his neck. “Can’t blame you.”

 “You look like you’re going to throw up,” Jim said.

Jason shakily laughed and tried to loosen his fingers from where they gripped the table. “A lot of people were saying that to me. But right now, there’s a good chance I might.”

“What’s in the bag?” Jim asked.

The questions felt like an automatic machine gun firing off into his stomach. There was no pause or remorse — just more. Jason looked at his duffle, paling significantly. “My stuff. I… I haven’t been home yet.”

Jim raised his eyebrow. “I thought you got in last night.”

Jason nodded. “There was… an incident.” Jim waited for Jason to elaborate and he licked his lips. “I’m not coping,” he said, more honestly than he intended. “I don’t think I like being back here.”

“Hard to see all the damage you caused?” Jim guessed, a growl edging its way into his voice.

That question missed his gut but caught him in the chest.

Jason grimaced. “It’s not the easiest.”

Jim looked him up and down, and his nose twitched. “You seen a bed at all?”

“No sir,” Jason replied, flinching at how small his voice sounded. “I saw a couch.” He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Jim. Away from the lines on his face, or the grey in his moustache. He’d always been old in Jason’s head because of how young Jason was when he’d first met the then Sergent, but now he looked older too. “What are you doing here?” he blurted out, finally shooting back.

But if Jim’s questions were bullets, Jason’s was a party pipe that made no noise and rolled up the wrong way. It felt dumb and childish and stupid, and it made Jason want to disappear into the PVC leather booth.

Jim looked around Pauli’s, eyes focusing in on the roof and the glass, all new to replace the bullet holes and broken windows. “I used to come here a lot with the kids. It means a bit to me. Thought I’d do my part to keep it open.”

Jason let out a long steady breath that he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “Oh.” His cheeks burnt. “That’s… a good thing.”

They met each other’s eye again, and Jason couldn’t hold his gaze too long. “You gotta lot of nerve coming back here,” Jim said, but he wasn’t angry, only resigned. “In the same booth, too. Only the craziest of criminals I’ve met return to the scene of the crime.”

Jason’s jaw twitched. “It’d be hard to classify me as sane right now.” Jim and Jason stared at each other over the table and finally, Jason broke. “I’m trying to remember,” he said softly.

“Remember?” Jim asked.

“A couple who died that night,” Jason explained. “Their daughter jumped me last night.”

Jim frowned. “What?”

“That was the incident,” Jason answered. “I was jumped when I arrived. The girl who jumped me said her parents died. Here.”

Jim studied him carefully, looking for a word of a lie but found nothing.

Arlene came back to their table, carrying two trays off food, wafting scents of breakfast. “Two eggs and meats, with extra meats and one scrambled with a fried tomato for the commissioner. I’ll bring your water now. Coffee top up?” she asked.

But neither of them had touched their coffees since she poured them before.

She bustled back behind the counter and left Jason and Jim alone for a second time. “So you’re feeling remorseful,” Jim scoffed. He stabbed his tomato and small seedlings went flying over his plate. Jason pushed his plate away, the smell making his nausea worse.

That was the worst part. Jason felt guilt and regret, but he wasn’t sure how much of it was remorse for Gotham and it’s inhabitants. There was more remorse for Barbara than anyone else. But the guilt and anger at himself was overwhelming when he thought about it. “I’m feeling saner,” he replied.

Jim raised his eyebrow. “Oh so you’re going with the crazy thing?”

Jason flinched. He hated that idea. “I’m not innocent. I just… wasn’t in the right mind. The longer times go on, the more I realise that.”

Jim hummed. “Why’d you pick this place?” When Jason looked confused, Jim added, “Call it curiosity. I had to help write up a lot of reports about the Knight. Everyone thinks Pauli’s was a target because it’s a hotspot. But you put a lot of effort into making that night meaningful.”

“I did?” Jason asked.

Jim raised his eyebrow. “You didn’t realise? Maybe you were crazy. Killinger’s. Your HQ. Your Dad, Willis, was arrested there.”

“He was?” Jason felt like a dumb child. “When?”

“The last time. Willis Todd led a police chase through Gotham, and his car crashed outside. He tried running through the mall, but he was caught,” Jim said, studying Jason carefully. “You really didn’t know that?”

Jason hadn’t remembered, but it felt like something he should have known. He tried to think, but he couldn’t dredge up that memory. “The police came to our house. I thought they just took him.”

“He escaped them and stole a car,” Jim corrected him.

Jason squinted. He vaguely remembered something about a stolen car. “I don’t remember.”

“So what about ACE Chemicals? Going back to where Joker, your kidnapper started?”

Jason shrugged. “It’s Gotham’s biggest chemical plant. That was by chance.”

“Pinkney Orphanage. Where you ended up right after your mother died.”

“It was abandoned. I just told Riddler. I didn’t–”

“Your base on Miagani Island. It’s where Batman and Robin dropped off Killer Croc for the GCPD to find after your first mission.”

Jason squinted, and thought about it and maybe they had come up from beneath the sewers somewhere nearby but…

“What was Pauli’s to you?” Jim asked. “Even if you didn’t realise it then, I’m telling you now you had your reasons. What did Pauli’s mean?”

Jason cast his mind back, like he had before to remember the night of the siege, only that time he thought back further to when he was making plans with Scarecrow.

“We need to make a statement,” he told Jonathan Crane. They’d been standing in an apartment. His childhood apartment. The building in North Gotham had long ago been abandoned after the Arkham City fiasco, and he’d taken up residence inside for the time being. There was a map of Gotham spread out on the dining table and the three islands, that had been home to the cities elite when he was growing up, were marked with thumbtacks to highlight critical parts of the plan.

“To get the Bat running. Start him on the backpedal.” Jason was playing with a bright red tack in his hand, rolling it between his calloused fingers.

“Where?” Jonathan asked.

Jason took a moment to consider, then lent across and pressed the tack into Pauli’s Diner without hesitation. “There.”

He pushed his mind further back into the jumbled mess of before Joker was kidnapped and remembered. “I was suspended,” he said. “For starting a fight.”

“Starting?” Jim asked.

Jason considered it. “No. I was finishing it. Some kid was getting bullied - I can’t remember who. So I jumped in and beat up the other kids. I want to say it was the week before I was taken?”

“What does Pauli’s have to do with it?”

Jason frowned. “Bruce didn’t think it was right that they suspended me, but he also hadn’t been able to get into the school to argue my case. He’d been… somewhere out of Gotham, I think. So he took me into work with him to hang out with Lucius. He was supposed to tutor me and was going to let me work on the Batmobile and some tech.

“We drove in, but before we got to Wayne Tower, Bruce brought me here.” Jason looked around the place and eyed the table. “We sat here and had breakfast… A couple of days later, Joker blew up a bus full of children and I ran away.” Jason looked around Pauli’s.

That morning that Bruce had brought him there, they’d arrived mid-morning after the rush. Jason had said something about how he was going to fail calculus and Bruce sat next to Jason and told him to take out his work. He had one arm around his shoulders and pointed out the mistakes and explained to him where he went wrong and how to get the right answer.

They might have been there for an hour before they ordered food, and Jason remembered it had been nice.

Now it was tainted by so many the death of so many and the ruined life of a Gotham police officer.

All because of a place he had breakfast with his Dad once.

“Listen, Commissioner–”

“No, you listen here,” Jim interrupted him. He leant across the table and glared at Jason, slamming his fist on the table. “When you died, and I had no clue who you were, let alone who my daughter was, I felt bad. You were a kid and I used to remember seeing you on the streets, running around and causing mayhem. You were a thorn in my side, but you were innocent and didn’t know better. Then Bruce adopted you and got you killed, and my daughter was heartbroken by the whole thing. The only time I’d ever seen her that hurt was when she was shot. Do you get that?”

Jason swallowed and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Jim’s fist clenched around his fork. “You were a kid, but now you’re a man. You’re not running around stealing hotdogs and moving messages for crime bosses anymore. You killed people. A lot of people. You brought Gotham to its knees.”

Six months ago, he would have been proud of himself. But there was no pride in whatever he was feeling then. Jason tipped his head forward, watching some of the butter that was mixed into his eggs drip down the side of the plate. “I know, sir.”

“No you don’t,” Jim snapped. He lowered his voice. “The city is broken, Jason and the worst part is, is that I could have forgiven you for that. Because you were still in the headspace of a hurt kid.”

Jason lifted his head and looked at Jim. Looked at how angry he was, how he was barely holding it together. Hadn’t that all been directed at him? “What?” Jason asked.

“I heard what the Joker did to you. Tim and Barbara told me when they came back home. I know what you went through and how you got that scar on your face. I know he called you his Plan J.”

Jason flinched. He had only told Bruce that.

_But Bruce told Barbara, Dick, and Tim what had happened to you._

He suddenly was angry at Bruce. He hadn’t wanted him to tell the others that. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know. If it had just been between him, Joker and Bruce it made it less real. “Bruce shouldn’t have–”

“Bruce shouldn’t have done a lot of things. I blame him for all of this, especially for what happened to you _and_ Barbara,” Jim snapped. “He put you kids – _children_ in harm’s way for years.” Jason winced as Jim crossed his arms over his chest. “I can see how you got it all twisted in your head. I’m not beyond feeling sympathy for that and for the whole mess of Halloween and Pauli’s. While what you did was terrible, I understand it.

“What I can’t get over Jason, is how you took and used my daughter as a pawn in all of this.”

Jason closed his eyes again, feeling Barbara on his lap once more.

“She loved you,” Jim spat. “And I don’t think she was the same after you died. I don’t think I ever saw my little girl again after you went missing. But even with how much she cared about you, you were willing to drag her out of her home and leave her with Scarecrow for him to throw her off a building.”

Jason shuddered and opened his eyes. There was nothing but fury in Jim’s face. He opened his mouth to defend himself but realised there was no defence. He had nothing to say. “I’m going to be civil this weekend,” Jim said. “With both you and Bruce. For Tim, and because Barbara asked. But when this wedding is over, you both need to get the hell out of Gotham. Because the election is announced on Monday, and if I’m mayor, I’m setting the bounty on _both_ of your heads if you come back. I’ll use the Siege and Batman as the reason, but this ain’t about that. This is about Barbara and the danger the both of you have put her in. Is that understood?”

The relief was surprising.

Jason considered, for a moment, that it was because Jim was letting him off with a slap on the wrist compared to what he should have been getting. It was a pardon, under the provision he never returned.

And he wanted to help Dick with his case, but he could do that from Mazatlán if he was going to be on comms. He squeezed the bag in the booth next to him as it dawned on him that he’d taken the suit as a precaution. That should the worse come, which it so often did on the streets of Gotham, he would be able to fight back.

And not as Arkham Knight – who destroyed the city – or the red-masked vigilante – who had been, in the time of its conception, a way he was trying to punish The Joker, by taking his alias and using it to destroy the Batman.

Leaving straight after the wedding wasn’t too far off their plan. They had intended to stay until the next Wednesday but that wasn’t hard to rectify. Jason felt guilty, but the idea excited him. “Yes sir. I’ll tell Bruce.”

Jim stood up and took out his wallet. He threw the money on the table for both his and Jason’s order and raised his voice, not taking his eyes off Jason. “Sorry Arlene. Got a big call. Need to get into the office.”

Arlene looked up from the counter and tutted her tongue. “Well at least let me pack it in a to-go bag.”

“No, I’m okay. The young gentleman here can finish it for me.” He grabbed his jacket and swung it over his arm. “See you at the rehearsal dinner, son.”

“See you then, sir,” Jason murmured.

Jim left without a further word, the door to the diner chiming on the way out. Jason sunk further down in his chair and closed his eyes.

He rubbed his face, annoyed with himself for ever thinking it was a good idea to go back to Pauli’s. He took out his own money, giving the waitress a generous tip for the meal he’d barely touched and got up out of the booth, catching the first cab he could see back to the apartment.

He’d done enough exploring for the morning, and buried his face in his hands, missing the woman who took the taxi behind him and followed him back to the Clock Tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I find it harder to pull Jason apart than I did putting him back together, but I have to break him down. I just have to!
> 
> CONGRATULATIONS TO AO3 AND ALL OF ITS WRITERS FOR BEING NOMINATED FOR A HUGO AWARD! Seriously, I think back of my days of reading FanFiction.net on my old IBM when all the Anne Rice drama went down (I was 8 and reading XFiles, and you could only find sex fanfiction stories on specialised sites) and the fact it's been nominated is a big deal! I mean, of course, it began with Star Trek fanfiction zines back before I was born (which is also the origin of ponfarr fics, which today became A/B/O fics... but we'll forgive it) but LOOK WHERE WE ARE NOW!
> 
> P.S. I use Grammarly and sometimes I flick on the 'plagiarism' check out of curiosity.
> 
> Less than one per cent of this chapter is identical to a sentence of a Harry Potter/Tom Riddle slow burn fic (Sentence: The idea of going back there made him feel Link: ), a One Piece ff – I have no idea about One Piece (Sentence: unable to hide the amusement from his voice.), a Naruto/Sasuke slash fic (Sentence: He stood up and chugged the rest of his) and an ESPN article about Tiger Woods faltering with a late bogey (Sentence: No one expected this week to be easy.)
> 
> I'm sorry for my atrocious plagiarism, but at least I'm not Cassandra Clare and pretending like it never happened. ;)
> 
> (Yes, shots fired... also, why am I old enough to remember that all this shit happened?!)


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